Anti-Judaism, Meddlesomeness, and Epistemic Supersessionism in the Epistle to Diognetus

1. Introduction

In the Epistle to Diognetus (Diog.), an apologetic and protreptic treatise dating to the second or third century CE, an anonymous writer attempts to explain Christian piety as a “new race [genos] or way of life” and the consequences of it appearing “now and not before” in the world (Diog. 1.1). The writer’s hope, it seems, is to elucidate for Diognetus how Christians are differentiated from Jews and Hellenes.[1] As part of a broader argument regarding Jewish practices they label “superstition” [deisidaimonia], the writer takes aim at dietary habits, the Sabbath, circumcision, and calendrical cycles. After condemning these practices one by one, the writer believes that Diognetus should better understand why Christians avoid the “common aimlessness and deception and meddlesomeness [polupragmonsunēs] and pride of the Jews” (4.6). Not long after, Christians are characterized specifically by their lack of meddlesomeness, since the writer argues that Christian teaching “is not discovered through some thought and reflection of meddlesome [polupragmonōn] humans” (5.3).

While Diognetus’s rhetorical strategy is straightforward to the point that some scholars think it is almost cliché,[2] scholars have taken a range of translational approaches to the term polupragmosunē, suggesting that its function in Diognetus’s argument may be more complex than previously assumed. It has been translated, often without comment or explanation, as “(excessive) fussiness,”[3] “meddling ways,”[4] the “busy-body spirit,”[5] “busyness,”[6] “(meticulous or indiscreet) ritualism,”[7] “inter-meddling,”[8] “inappropriate zeal,”[9] “untimely zeal,”[10] “petty curiosity,”[11] “eagerness to investigate,”[12] “complicated observances,”[13] or “officiousness.”[14] While many of these translations highlight the nosiness of polupragmosunē, some scholars have taken the term as an opportunity to impute (further) Judeophobic stereotypes into Diognetus’s critique: Jewish legalism and excessive ritualism. The sheer volume of attempts to translate this term demonstrates how tricky it is to nail down why Jewish practices are critiqued as embodying polupragmosunē.[15] What about Jewish practices and claims to knowledge are deemed meddlesome, and why does the writer of Diognetus think Christians are different? Some scholars, like Judith Lieu, have suggested that polupragmosunē is used polemically to recall “complaints about their [i.e., Jewish] involvement in local civic disputes as well as their proselytism.”[16] While this is possible, such a reading does not account for how Christians are characterized in Diog. 5.3 as having uncovered a teaching from an avenue other than from the meddlesome—an epistemic distinction seems to be at stake rather than a civic one.

In this article, I want to contextualize the term polupragmosunē as it is used in the works of other writers in the Roman imperial period (particularly Plutarch, Apuleius, Lucian, and Tertullian) and demonstrate how polupragmosunē is a key component of Diognetus’s anti-Jewish rhetoric and construction of uniquely Christian knowledge. While Diognetus has rightly been examined in terms of ethnicity and its discourse of citizenship, as well as regarding its claim that language and geography are not at the core of Christian difference,[17] I want to turn our attention to the text’s construction of epistemic supersessionism. Of course, many forms of supersessionism include claims of epistemic superiority; what makes Diognetus’s supersessionist take distinct is its absolute denial of Jewish knowledge of the divine will and of Jewish practices developed in what the writer deems a negligible preincarnational past. By relegating Jewish knowledge about God to the level of misdirected meddlesomeness that leads to vain ritual practices and misguided attention paid to creation, Diognetus presents readers with an argument for Christian epistemic superiority initiated through Jesus’s incarnation and a Christian total denial (not merely a replacement) of Jews as those who have knowledge of God’s needs and desires.

2. Polupragmonsunē in Roman Imperial Literature

Polupragmosunē, along with its verbal form polupragmoneō and cognate periergazō, are used throughout Greek literature to refer to those whose nosiness stretches beyond acceptable boundaries.[18] Here, I will focus primarily on how this concern over the meddlesome person develops in contemporaneous Roman imperial literature—particularly Plutarch’s On Being a Busybody (peri polupragmosunēs or de curiositate; abbreviated as Curios.), Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (Metam.), Lucian’s Zeus Catechized (Jupp. conf.), and some of Tertullian’s corpus.[19] My hope is to contextualize Diognetus’s frustration with Jews purportedly seeking knowledge where they should not and why Christians are not deemed meddlesome. While we will see contemporaneous writers use polupragmosunē (and its Latin equivalent, curiositas) to condemn misguided attempts at knowledge acquisition, Diognetus adds a Christian anti-Jewish twist to his use of the term to claim that Jews wrongly believed they had correct knowledge about God at all.

Plutarch composed an entire treatise on the problem of meddlesomeness and the limits of acceptable knowledge, On Being a Busybody, in which he explored the topic of what knowledge one should have or should seek after. Plutarch uses polupragmosunē and periergia interchangeably to refer to a “desire to learn the troubles of others,” as well as a “passion for finding out whatever is hidden and concealed,” embodied in people that he identifies as meddlesome (Curios. 515c–d).[20] He worries that excessive nosiness darkens the soul and introduces passions that, if not eradicated, at least need to be redirected toward a more noble cause. Plutarch proposes two shifts that must happen within a busybody if they are to see any progress. First, the meddlesome one needs to ask a more “useful and salvific” question: “Where did I go wrong? What deed did I do? What duty did I not complete?” (Curios. 515f).[21] Plutarch argues that meddlesome people often fail to self-scrutinize or to see the plank in their own eye, as the Gospel of Matthew’s Jesus would say. Second, Plutarch suggests that busybodies seek after “hidden and obscure troubles” and overlook things that are in plain view (Curios. 516d–e). Things are concealed because they are meant to be concealed, and it is more beneficial to turn the soul to better subjects than neighbors’ misfortunes. For example, Plutarch urges a new direction for the busybody’s attention to affairs of heaven, earth, air, and sea—the pursuit of natural knowledge (Curios. 517c–518a).[22] Plutarch does not condemn meddlesomeness as inherently wrong, but suggests that it stems from inquiry into an improper subject. As a solution, one should habitually discipline oneself toward the goal of self-control (enkrateia), so as to stop reading epitaphs on the roadside, peeping through people’s windows, opening mail in a hurry, or listening to gossip that fails to be “useful or profitable” for a virtuous life (Curios. 520d–522d). Plutarch is deeply concerned with the usefulness of inquiry and one’s ability to direct their attention to matters that are revealed, rather than those that are meant to stay hidden.

A generation after Plutarch, Lucius Apuleius of Madauros wrote the Metamorphoses, more commonly known as the Golden Ass. Here, curiosity and penchant for magic of the protagonist—a certain Lucius from Madauros—led to his transformation into an ass. In his exploration of the ancient history of curiosity, André Labhardt notes that Apuleius is the writer who coins the Latin term curiositas, and others have suggested that Apuleius narrativizes themes from Plutarch’s On Being a Busybody.[23] Around the same time, Aulus Gellius tried to translate the title of Plutarch’s On Being a Busybody into Latin and fails, noting that there was no obvious Latin equivalent to the concept of polupragmosunē.[24] Even for Roman imperial writers, the meaning of polupragmosunē was sometimes difficult to pin down.

The motif of curiositas appears both in Lucius’s overarching story of assification and in the prominent love story of Cupid and Psyche, although I will focus only on the former here. Like Plutarch, Apuleius suggests that there are some correct ways that people can direct their inquiries, but these are expectations that Lucius fails to live up to. At the outset of the Metamorphoses, Lucius encounters a small group of people and eavesdrops on their conversation, quickly asking them to divulge their stories to him. Lucius claims that he “thirsted for novelty” [sititor novitatis] while simultaneously arguing that he is “not some meddlesome person [curiosum], but the type of person who wants to know everything––or, certainly, most things” (Metam. 1.2). Lucius is immediately presented as a figure that does not want to be characterized by his curiositas, but who cannot resist wanting to know everything and be involved in every affair. Lucius recognizes that it is acceptable to desire some knowledge, but that desiring too much would make him a curiosus.

Lucius quickly lives up to his meddlesomeness when he learns that his friend Milo’s wife, Pamphile, is accused of being a witch, and as a curiosus he cannot resist wanting to become her apprentice (Metam. 2.6). Lucius’s meddlesomeness leads him to be accidentally transformed into an ass by Photis, Milo’s enslaved woman, when he dabbles in magical knowledge beyond his grasp. Lucius’s assification, as well as subsequent enslavement and lack of self-control throughout the narrative, can be read as a manifestation of his underlying curiositas, and suggests to the reader that meddlesomeness makes one less than human(e), no better than an ass.[25] Lucius’s restoration into human form by the priest of Isis at the end of the narrative, therefore, undoes his assification and curiositas. As the priest states (Metam. 11.15):[26]

Not your birth, nor even your position, nor even your good education has been of any help at all to you. Rather, on the slippery path of reckless youth you plunged into pleasures like an enslaved person (serviles voluptates) and reaped the perverse reward of your unfortunate meddlesomeness (curiositatis improsperae). Nevertheless, the blindness of Fortune, while torturing you with the worst of perils, has brought you in its random wickedness to this devout happiness. (Metam. 11.15)

After his transformation, Lucius tells the reader who is “eager to learn” (studiose lector) about the Isaic mysteries that it is not permitted (liceret), and that divulging such information would only lead to “impious talkativeness” (impiae loquacitatis) and “reckless meddlesomeness” (temerariae curiositatis; Metam. 11.23). Much like Plutarch, Apuleius and his literary double demonstrate that meddling in the affairs of friends and neighbors leads to a miserable transformation of the self, and that these urges need to be reined in. While Plutarch suggests directing polupragmosunē toward natural knowledge generally, Apuleius is not as optimistic about redirecting this urge and suggests that veneration of the savior Isis is the best possible path to undoing the consequences of meddlesomeness.

The Assyrian satirist, Lucian of Samosata, played with this contemporaneous discourse on the limits of meddlesomeness in conversation—especially if one’s interlocutor is a deity. In Zeus Catechized, Cyniscus interrogates Zeus regarding the paradox of fate and divine omnipotence. Cyniscus repeatedly requests answers to his various questions, to which Zeus answers with limitations. When Cyniscus asks about the identities and powers of Destiny and Fortune, Zeus bluntly replies: “It is not permitted to know everything, Cyniscus” (Jupp. conf. 3). Zeus characterizes Cyniscus’s questions as clever and arrogant as he tries to rhetorically undermine the agency of the gods, their influence on human affairs, and the need for sacrifice (Jupp. conf. 6, 9). When asking why Zeus strikes ships everyday with lightning bolts rather than focusing on thieves, Zeus clarifies once more that Cyniscus is not permitted to acquire this knowledge, particularly since he is so meddlesome (polupragmōn; Jupp. conf. 16). Zeus eventually shuts down the conversation by insinuating that Cyniscus is not worthy enough to ask questions, since he is impudent and a sophist, and leaves before answering Cyniscus’s final question (Jupp. conf. 19). Cynicus is characterized by his divine interlocutor as meddlesome for asking about fields of knowledge that are beyond his grasp and for failing to recognize when his inquiry is too rash.

Finally, more than any other early Christian writer until Augustine, Tertullian was deeply concerned with the limits of human knowledge and inquiry. He is pulled in two directions, sometimes arguing that his opponents do not inquire enough and sometimes arguing that they go too far. In short: Tertullian presents himself (and those he deems part of an orthodox tradition) as the measuring stick for what Tertullian deems the proper directions and amounts of inquiry.

Much like Plutarch and Apuleius, Tertullian imagines that inquiry is not an evil in itself, but can be properly directed toward objects worthy of inquiry. Tertullian views himself as an ideal curiosus at the beginning of his Homilies against the Jews, arguing that his sermons will dissipate the cloud of dispute and reveal the truth through careful inquiry into scripture (Adv. Iud. 1.1). Elsewhere in his literary repertoire, Tertullian depicts Irenaeus as “the most inquisitive interpreter of all” (omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator) in his invocation of previous Christians who combatted Valentinian thought (Adv. Val. 5.1). One can be properly meddlesome in relation to sacred texts to a certain degree. There are, however, opponents whom Tertullian condemns for failing to act as a moderate curiosus. In To the Nations, Tertullian mocks those who lament the exponential growth of the Christian demographic and suggests that Hellenes are actively ignoring the truth of Christianity because of their dormant “human curiosity” (curiositas humana; Ad nat. 1.1.3).[27] Hellenic philosophers, he argues, fail to discover the correct god because they are caught up in useless speculation and—unlike Christians—do not properly fear God. Even though some philosophers were granted the characteristic of curiositas as a positive feature and even read scriptures occasionally, they failed to comprehend them because they lacked belief (Ad nat. 2.2.5). Like the overly inquisitive Socrates or the foolish Thales who walked into a well while staring at the sky, Tertullian characterizes philosophers as utilizing a “stupid meddlesomeness” regarding natural phenomena (stupidam curiositatem; Ad nat. 2.4.19). Tertullian agrees with Plutarch that meddlesomeness is poorly directed, but suggests against Plutarch that one ought to direct such curiosity at the creator rather than at creation, since natural phenomena are not the end goal of knowledge.

While Tertullian blames some Hellenes for not being meddlesome enough in seeking out knowledge about God, he is equally as fearful of those who become excessively inquisitive about particular topics. For example, in Against Marcion, Tertullian’s invective begins under the assumption that many Christians, “especially heretics” (maxime haeretici), are overly inquisitive about the problem of evil and its origin, such that “their senses are made blunt by the enormity of their curiosity” (obtunsis sensibus ipsa enomitate curiositatis; Adv. Marc. 1.2.2). To dig too far into a single inquiry will distract a Christian from the bigger picture, thus misdirecting proper theological and epistemic inquiry. Perhaps most pointedly in his On the Prescription of Heretics, Tertullian attempts to correct Christians who debate with heretics via scriptural proofs, and worries that Christians will be drawn into curiositas and hesitation by heretics. There is a singular truth, Tertullian argues, and so there is no need for an endless search: the imperative to “seek and you shall find” only applied before Jesus made his identity manifest (Praes. 8–10, 14).[28] Seeking is treated as the antithesis of believing, and so only heretics seek and make endless inquiry.

Tertullian goes so far as to posit that all excesses of heretical/Hellenic philosophical inquiry have their origins in Jewish lore, attributing the beginning of “all meddlesomeness, all the way up to interpretation of the stars” (omnem curiositatem usque ad stellarum interpretationem) to the fallen Watchers of Genesis 6 (De cultu fem. 1.2.1).[29] The desire to seek out improper knowledge becomes associated with the heretic, the daemonic, the Hellenic, and Jewish history. Only a select few in Tertullian’s thought—notably, himself and Irenaeus—are truly capable of a controlled manner of natural and scriptural inquiry. Others are urged to trust the (conveniently orthodox) experts as to what knowledge is acceptable to pursue, as well as when not to meddle in philosophical inquiry. In doing so, Tertullian suggests that faith (fides) grounded in the rule (regula)—not interpretation of scripture (exercitatio scripturarum)—must be maintained at all costs (Praes. 14.1–4). All inquiry is limited by what does not disturb Tertullian’s rule of faith, the standard by which seeking is deemed acceptable or not.

Contemporaneous Greek and Latin authors made sense of meddlesomeness primarily to describe those who inquire too much about something that is meant to be unknown or whose inquiry is misdirected, albeit with some exceptions for the most erudite inquisitors. As we will see below, Diognetus participates in this discussion about the limits of knowledge and its acquisition, but combines polupragmosunē with anti-Jewish and supersessionist argumentation to craft a meddlesomeness that wholly bars Jews from any knowledge of God.

3. The “meddlesome” Jews in Diognetus 3–4

Participating in this shared epistemological discourse in the Roman imperial period, Diognetus advocates for a particular type of epistemic distinction between Jews and Christians, positing that meddlesomeness is a characteristic of Jewish misunderstanding regarding God’s needs and desires. We see this type of argumentation begin in Diog. 3, where the writer accuses Jews of offering sacrifices to a deity that does not have any material needs and who is, in fact, the creator who “supplies all of us with what we need” (3.4).[30] The writer goes on to argue that between the three races (genē) of Hellenes, Jews, and Christians that inhabit the world, only Christians have obtained proper knowledge in the proper manner. In other words, both content and method of inquiry are deemed important; Jewish lack of knowledge consequently leads to an improper manner of worship. H. F. Stander’s stylistic breakdown of Diog. 4 helps clarify the polemicist’s argument.[31] He suggests that the chapter can be broken down into multiple units, roughly corresponding with the verse numbers (4.1–6): unit 1 lays out the four practices at stake (meat; Sabbath; circumcision; calendrical divisions)[32] and claims that they are not “worthy of discussion” or “instruction” because they are so obviously useless (4.1). Units 2–5 provide rhetorical questions about the superfluity of each of these Jewish practices, arguing that God could not have ordained any of them (4.2–5). Unit 6, in which Jews are characterized by polupragmosunē, is read by Stander as a “résumé” by which the writer completes their case against Jewish practices and has “sufficiently instructed” Diognetus about things about which he purportedly did not need instruction (4.6).[33] As a recapitulation of supposedly obvious rebuttals of Jewish practice, Diog. 4 treats all four Jewish practices as manifestations of epistemic meddlesomeness.

As noted earlier, some translations of Diog. 4.6 tie polupragmosunē to ritualism or observances. Such translations, however, buy into antiquated and Judeophobic tropes of Jews as legalistic and ritual-obsessed in a way that Diognetus’s Christians supposedly are not, and partially obscure what type of anti-Jewish argument Diogentus itself is making.[34] For example, the writer critiques Jews who create calendrical cycles based on their observations of astronomical phenomena and claim they are God-ordained (4.5), but not long after praises God for so carefully arranging the elements, moon, stars, and heavens (7.2). The problem that emerges in Diog. 3–4 is not necessarily the practices themselves, but how the writer of Diognetus believes that Jews rationalize and claim to know that such practices are what God cares about. In the midst of criticizing Jewish sacrificial practices, Diognetus distinguishes Jewish sacrifice from Hellenic sacrifice based on (what the writer believes) Jews conceptualize that sacrifices do. He argues that while Hellenes do actually sacrifice to empty images, Jews are “those thinking” (logizomenoi; 3.3) and “imagining” (oiomenoi; 3.5) and “supposing” (dokountōn; 3.5) they are offering sacrifices to God. As we saw above, Diognetus envisions God as being without need, and so challenges the epistemic scaffolding upon which the Jewish sacrificial system—along with calendrical system and treatment of the body—function. Diognetus focuses on Hellenic action but Jewish belief about and epistemic justification of action.[35]

 What makes dietary restrictions, the Sabbath, circumcision, and calendrical divisions examples of Jewish “meddlesomeness” in Diog. 4? The writer takes particular aim at Jews for claiming to know what God wants and enjoys. In a list of rhetorical questions (Diog. 4.2–5), the writer rejects: the possibility that God would create and then classify all the world’s created objects as either useful or useless (4.2), the belief that God would choose to hinder activity on the Sabbath (4.3), the claim that some people are “especially loved by God” for being circumcised (4.4), and the possibility that God arranged the seasons to produce times and spaces to justify particular festivals (4.5). In each of these cases, Diognetus takes issue with Jewish claims to knowledge about God and God’s arrangement of the created order. Meddlesomeness (polupragmosunē) emerges as one descriptor that Diognetus uses to demean traditions emerging from the Torah without ever naming the Torah as their source. By doing so, the writer refuses to even engage with Jewish scripture and does not consider such texts “to be the framework on which an argument might stand,” as Clayton Jefford puts it.[36] Torah itself is not censured, but instead is outright ignored so that the writer of Diognetus can place blame on Jews themselves for “accepting” and “rejecting” certain foods (paradechesthai; paraiteisthai; 4.2), for slandering God “as if [saying]” certain actions are not allowed on the Sabbath (hōs; 4.3), for “taking pride” in circumcision as evidence of election (alazoneuesthai; 4.4), and for “differentiating” seasons “based on their own inclinations” (katadiairein pros tas autōn hormas; 4.5). Throughout Diog. 3–4, the writer’s polemical attacks fall squarely on Jewish epistemological claims and on Jewish decision-making that relies on purported knowledge of how God intended the created order to be perceived and used.[37]

Along with treating Jewish epistemic claims that undergird ritual practices as meddlesome, Diognetus marks each of these Jewish rituals and their epistemic basis with negative terms. Jewish distinction between foods acceptable or unacceptable to eat are labeled as “qualms” and “unlawful” (psophodees; athemiston; 4.1–2); claims that the Sabbath is distinct as “superstition” and “impious” (deisidaimonian; asebes; 4.1, 4.3); circumcision as a sign of election is labeled as “prideful” (alazoneian; alazoneuesthai; 4.1, 4.4); feasts and calendrical distinctions as God-ordained as “hypocrisy” and a “lack of understanding” (eirōneian; aphrosunēs; 4.1, 4.5). Each of these terms is meant to corroborate that Jews lack the epistemic basis for performing particular rituals, and wrongly believe they understand God. As Hugh Bowden pointed out in his analysis of superstition in Theophrastus’s On Characters and Plutarch’s On Superstition, deisidaimonia is rhetorically constructed as the result of a “lack of understanding about the gods” and a fearful presumption “not only that the gods exist, but [...] that they are out to get him.”[38] Superstition, expressed through Sabbath observance, is a visible symptom of Jewish lack of knowledge about God for Diognetus. The same can be said of Diognetus’s use of pride, which is used in the context of epistemology: what is prideful is not the action of circumcision itself to the writer, but rather the purportedly-false belief that circumcision is what God wants. While scholars like Michelle Freeman have rightly pointed out how Diognetus’s use of paradox and antithesis highlights how Jewish and Hellenic practices have unintended negative consequences with the gods,[39] I want to supplement this argument by noting how Diognetus sees Jewish ritual practices as stemming from a false certainty that leads them to manifest impiety, pride, and meddlesomeness.

Diognetus’s use of polupragmosunē is at least somewhat distinct from contemporaneous uses of the term because the writer is not necessarily concerned with epistemic restraint or redirecting one’s inquiries toward a more useful object. As William Horst has argued, Diognetus “does not acknowledge that God was ever made known to the Jewish people in any way,” thus taking an extreme stance among contemporary Christian apologists by denying even some Jewish knowledge about God.[40] Rather than focusing on what should be known or is able to be known, Diognetus presents Jewish meddlesomeness as a failure to recognize that Jews do not know God and yet, under a false epistemic certainty, perform particular rituals based on wrong understandings of the “divine orderings of the world” (4.5).

4. Christian Epistemic Supersessionism in Diognetus 5–10

In contrast to its characterization of Jewish meddlesomeness and the epistemic limitations set on Jews knowing God’s needs and desires, Diognetus presents Christian teaching as defined, in part, by its lack of meddlesomeness. At various points in the remainder of the extant portion of Diognetus, the writer argues that Christians did not gain proper knowledge of God from human avenues. Right after introducing Christians as indistinguishable from other humans, the writer points out that their teaching was not discovered “through some thought and reflection of meddlesome people” (epinoia tini kai phrontidi polupragmonōn anthropōn; 5.3). The writer notes elsewhere that the Christian piety is something that cannot be learned (mathein) from humans (4.6), nor can it stem from an “earthly discovery” (epigeion heurēma) or “human thought” (thnētēn epinoian; 7.1). Over and over, Diognetus emphasizes that Christian practice does not emerge from something that can be mentally grasped by observing the world created by God, but through the creator who was directly sent into the world. Jewish practices that focus on what Diognetus deems part of the created order—food, the body, calendars, celestial bodies—are deemed as misdirected practices stemming from unjustified epistemic arrogance.

In large part, Diognetus’s portrayal of meddlesomeness and the inability of Jews (not to mention Greek philosophers)[41] to acquire knowledge about God is given in order to answer one of Diognetus’s original questions: Why did this new race of Christians appear “now and not before” (1.1)? While never referring directly to Jewish scripture, Diognetus critiques Jewish practices often based on Israel’s history and textual interpretation.[42] Jewish meddlesomeness in Diognetus might be characterized as a misdirection of inquiry into what God wants from humanity through past events, human traditions, and textual interpretations (e.g., Abraham’s circumcision; Mosaic dietary laws), rather than through the Jesus event. Through this epistemological supersessionism, Diognetus demotes scriptural knowledge and historical practices to a point of near-erasure in favor of revelatory knowledge through Jesus’s appearance in the world.

Such a critique of scriptural knowledge and historical practices stems from the writer’s conception of God’s son as the only path through which knowledge of God’s desires and imitation of God becomes possible. While the invective of meddlesomeness is primarily applied to Jews, Diognetus also mocks the so-called trustworthy philosophers who claim to know “what God is” (ti pot’ esti theos; 8.1) before Jesus appeared on earth. Particularly in chapter 8, Diognetus becomes deeply concerned with the method by which one can see (idein) God, arguing that philosophers who see God in some (but not all) elements have no knowledge of God before God’s appearance to humanity via Christ. The act of God bringing Godself to light in the world becomes the mode by which knowledge of God becomes possible. Both Hellenic philosophical lack of knowledge and Jewish epistemic meddlesomeness, then, is not only about improper inquiry but about improper timing. Hellenes and Jews critiqued in Diognetus are notably caricatures of much earlier modes of thought and practice—of pre-Socratic philosophical discussion of the elements and pre-Jewish-Roman War treatment of Jewish sacrifice. While this has typically been characterized as a banal rhetorical and apologetic cliché,[43] it serves a purpose here: Diognetus temporally locks Hellenes and Jews in a preincarnational past in which it is impossible for them to know about Jesus’s appearance in the world, and thus are barred from Christian epistemic certainty about “the things prepared from the beginning” (ta ex archēs ētoimasmena), given “both to share in his benefits and to see and understand [idein kai noēsai] things that none of us would ever have expected” (8.11). Thus, Diognetus’s Jews cannot do anything except produce meddlesome inquiry in their attempts to seek out what the postincarnational writer finds so obvious. Unlike Tertullian’s admission that some Hellenes try to understand Christian scripture and inquire poorly because of their lack of belief, Diognetus does not give non-Christians the same benefit of the doubt.

Diognetus treats this process of Jesus’s unveiling and appearing on earth as a turning point for humanity’s ability to inquire accurately into what God wants and who God is. Just as Brandon Crowe has convincingly demonstrated that Diognetus combines Christology and soteriology to highlight “the Son’s Incarnation as a paradigmatic, epoch-altering event,” I want to add epistemology to the conversation.[44] Jesus’s physical appearance in the world is deemed relevant because it is the moment at which God’s “wise plan” (sophēn boulēn; 9.10) is handed over to humanity—at least, to those who are deemed capable of understanding that the incarnation of Jesus is meant to be the end of meddlesomeness and unnecessary inquiry. Diognetus’s argument is so thoroughly presentist that, as William Horst argues, the writer offers an “evident disregard for Jewish tradition” and rejects any possibility that knowledge about God was offered to preincarnational Israel.[45] Diognetus is, unlike his apologetic counterparts like Justin or Athenagoras, unbothered by claiming that Jews had no access to knowledge about God before the incarnation and that Jewish ritual practices emerged out of “pride” (alazoneia; 4.1 and 4.6), which I suggest Diognetus sees as emerging from a false epistemic certainty.[46] Put bluntly: Diognetus refuses to imagine a preincarnational world in which God is known to anyone, and equally refuses to imagine a postincarnational world in which Jews and Hellenes can acknowledge the one who “revealed himself through faith, which is the only means by which one is permitted to see God” (8.6). As a consequence, the writer suggests that all Jewish epistemic claims (and practices based upon them) are null and void.

The writer of Diognetus posits a process by which one goes from knowledge of God to love of God to imitation of God, particularly in chapter 10.[47] After encouraging Diognetus to acquire knowledge of the Father, he is reminded that God gave humans reason (logon), mind (noun), and the ability to “look up toward him” (anō pros auton horan; 10.2). Most critical editions read “look up to heaven” (anō pros ouranon horan), following Lachmann’s emendation rather than the transcription of the now-lost sole manuscript of Diognetus.[48] I suggest, however, that looking to and at God is exactly the point: a Christian who lives in the era of the incarnation and postincarnation are imagined as becoming an “imitator of God” (mimētēs theou; 10.4) specifically because they have seen God’s son and have a visible, embodied example to follow.[49] Rationality is characterized as a tool meant to assist humans in perceiving God, the world, and the incarnate Jesus whose presence and actions are expected to end meddlesome speculation about God in a postincarnational era. Unlike Cynicus’s failed interrogation of Zeus, who determined that meddlesome humans should not have knowledge of divine affairs, Diognetus argues that Jesus’s visible, bodily appearance is exactly what unveils divine affairs to those who obtain this Christian teaching.

Knowledge of God in Diognetus 10 is often correlated with the capacity for imitation of God and God’s attributes, like goodness and happiness. This ability to imitate God is crucial because, as the writer notes a chapter earlier, humans are only made worthy to enter the kingdom of God “by the goodness of God” (hupo tēs tou theou chrēstotētos; 9.1) and through God’s own power. Jesus’s physical presence in the world and eventual death is not only treated as a ransom to eradicate the preincarnation era of injustice (as Crowe has explored in depth),[50] but to be an embodied demonstration of God’s goodness that can be imitable and replicable. The goodness of God is something that Jesus is presented as expressing through life and death, but is not solely his possession. Rather, others are encouraged to imitate God and no longer seek answers apart from Jesus in order to enter the kingdom.

5. Conclusion

The Letter to Diognetus makes use of a term that highlights how the writer’s rhetorical strategy is built around the misdirected and purportedly-unperceived limits of Jewish epistemology and Christian access to proper knowledge. This “new race” (kainon genos; 1.1) of Christians is deemed epistemically distinct from Jews and Hellenes. Contemporaneous writers like Plutarch, Apuleius, Lucian, and Tertullian help clarify how language of meddlesomeness sets boundaries around what types of inquiry are deemed acceptable. Generally, such writers worry that meddlesome people get involved in situations that are not their own: magical practices, divine affairs, excessive theological debate or textual inquiry. Rather than merely setting boundaries around types of knowledge or directions of inquiry like these texts, Diognetus makes two important moves. First, it uses the semantic breadth of polupragmonsunē to present Jews as mistakenly prideful about their purported knowledge of God’s needs, desires, and expectations for how creation will be used. Diognetus suggests that “meddlesomeness” is not only about inquiry misdirected at the wrong source of knowledge (e.g., the created order), but a failure to see that the manner by which their knowledge is obtained and practices are justified (that is, without Jesus) is misguided. Second, Diognetus sets a temporal boundary around Jesus’s appearance in the world. The more common Christian apologetic goal of expressing some degree of continuity with Hellenic and Jewish texts or traditions is rejected in Diognetus’s presentist account of religious and epistemic difference. Hellenes and Jews are intentionally frozen in a pre-Jesus, preincarnational epistemic past in which they meddle endlessly in knowledge they cannot understand, never grasping God’s secret and wise plan without the knowledge revealed by Jesus (8.10). The temporal newness of Christians is not downplayed or treated as a hindrance by the writer. Instead, the “new race” of Christians in Diognetus is placed on a supersessionist pedestal with epistemic superiority, as well as sole access to true knowledge of God.

[1] I am especially grateful for comments, revisions, and suggestions from the anonymous reviewers at AJR that greatly improved this article, as well as for Matthew Chalmers shepherding this piece through the editing process. All translations are my own. I follow the Greek text as printed in Clayton N. Jefford, ed., The Epistle to Diognetus (with the Fragment of Quadratus): Introduction, Text, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). The date of Diognetus is somewhat contested, since it was only preserved in one 13th/14th-century manuscript (Codex Argentoratensis gr. 9) that was lost in a fire at the City Library of Strasbourg in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. Most scholars suggest a late second-century date (e.g. Henry G. Meecham, The Epistle to Diognetus [Manchester: University of Manchester, 1949], 19) while others suggest an early third-century date (e.g. Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988], 178–79). The exact date of Diog. is not relevant for my argument here. Since Diog. 11–12 are likely from a separate text after a lacuna that contained the end of Diognetus, I will not deal with them here but will focus only on Diog. 1–10. On the integrity of the text and this division, see Jefford, Diognetus, 43–51.

[2] Marco Rizzi, “Ad Diognetum 2–4: Polemics & Politics,” in A Diognète: Visions chrétiennes face à l’empire romain, ed. Gabriella Aragione, Enrico Norelli, and Flavio G. Nuvolone, Cahiers du Groupe Suisse d’Études Patristiques 1 (Prahins: Zèbre, 2012), 79–89 highlights such scholarship. 

[3] Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 359; Joseph B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan, 1891), 505: “excessive fussiness.”

[4] Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 2, LCL 25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 139.

[5] Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870), 307.

[6] Heinrich Kihn, Der Ursprung des Briefes an Diognet (Freiburg: Herder, 1882), 159: “Vielgeschäftigkeit.” Cf. Horacio E. Lona, An Diognet, Kommentar zu frühchristlichen Apologeten 8 (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 140.

[7] J. J. Thierry, The Epistle to Diognetus (Leiden: Brill, 1964), 30; Giovanni Saldarini and Giorgio De Capitani, Papia, Lettera di Barnaba, Lettera a Diogneto, I Padri Apostolici 3 (Milan: Mimep-Docete, 1996), 115: “ritualismo minuzioso”; H.-I. Marrou and Fr. Louvel, Les Écrits des Pères Apostoliques, Tome III: Pseudo-Barnabé, A Diognète (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 61: “ritualisme indiscret.”

[8] E. H. Blakeney, The Epistle to Diognetus (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: Macmillan, 1943), 46.

[9] Agostino Clerici, Didachè, Lettere di Ignazio d’Antiochia, A Diogneto: Introduzione e commenti, 2nd ed. (Milan: Paoline, 2000 [1998]), 119: “inopportune zelo.”

[10] Aragione et al., A Diognète, 24: “zèle inopportun.”

[11] J. C. Mayer, Die Schriften der apostolischen Väter nebst den Martyr-Akten des hl. Ignatius und hl. Polykarp (Kempten: Verlag der Jos. Röfel’schen Buchhandlung, 1869), 427: “der kleinlichen Neugier.”

[12] Fabio Ruggiero, A Diogneto: testo e traduzione, Nuovi Testi Patristic 1 (Rome: Città Nuova, 2020), 107: “smania d’indagare.”

[13] Daniel Ruiz Bueno, Padres Apostólicos: Edición Bilingüe Completa (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965), 849: “las complicadas observancias.”

[14] Jefford, Diognetus, 143.

[15] Translations of the noun polupragmōn in Diog. 5.3, where the writer discusses from whom Christians do not receive their teaching, include: “busy people,” “ingenious people,” “inquisitive men,” “restless men,” “restless minds,” “innovative men,” “inventive people,” “curious men,” and “men eagerly busily investigating.”

[16] Judith M. Lieu, “Identity Games in Early Christian Texts: The Letter to Diognetus,” in Ethnicity, Race, Religion: Identities and Ideologies in Early Jewish and Christian Texts, and in Modern Biblical Interpretation, ed. Katherine M. Hockey and David G. Horrell (London: T&T Clark, 2018), 59–72, quote on 64. Also see L. B. Radford, The Epistle to Diognetus (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1908), 62n2 (apud Jefford, Diognetus, 220n100) who suggests that meddlesomeness may refer to contemporaneous rabbinic argumentation that the writer of Diognetus intends to dismiss.

[17] Most prominently, Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), esp. 31–44.

[18] A well-known example is contained in the trial of Socrates in Plato’s Apology, in which Socrates reads a sworn statement that accuses him of “doing injustice and being meddlesome (periergazetai), investigating things beneath the earth and in the heavens, making the weaker argument stronger and teaching these same things to others” (Apol. 19b-c; cf. 24b). Elsewhere, Plato sees a relationship between being meddlesome (polupragmoneō), keeping to one’s own affairs, and justice itself (Gorg. 526c). To be meddlesome in other people’s affairs or to be too inquisitive about how the universe functions is deemed excessive and undesirable.

[19] I have chosen these texts as comparands because of their temporal proximity to Diognetus, so as to avoid straying to Roman republican (e.g., Pliny the Elder) or late ancient (e.g., Augustine) treatments of epistemology and the limits of inquiry. Discussion over whether a lack of knowledge can be deemed good has been rekindled in recent philosophical discussion. See Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001); Michael Jeffrey Winter, “Does Moral Virtue Require Knowledge? A Response to Julia Driver,” Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 15 (2012): 533–46; Neil C. Manson, “Epistemic Restraint and the Vice of Curiosity,” Philosophy 87.2 (2012): 239–59.

[20] See André Labhardt, “Curiositas: notes sur l’histoire d’un mot et d’une notion,” Museum Helveticum 17 (1960): 206; P. G. Walsh, “The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine),” Greece & Rome 35.1 (1988): 73. On the earlier development of language of inquiry in Latin literature, see Mary Beagon, “The Curious Eye of the Elder Pliny,” in Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts, ed. Roy K. Gibson and Ruth Morello (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 71–88.

[21] Τhe same set of questions occur in Plutarch’s On Superstition during a comparison between an atheist (atheos) who looks inward to identify their error, and a superstitious person (deisidaimōn) who blames gods or spirits for their own unfortunate circumstances and thereby does nothing to fix their own situation (Superst. 168b).

[22] Plutarch does not note the limitations of the pursuit of natural knowledge, however, like Cicero and Seneca do. See Cicero, On Ends 4.13, 5.48; Seneca, Natural Questions pref.12; Walsh, “The Rights and Wrongs,” 80.

[23] Labhardt, “Curiositas,” 206–9. Labhardt notes that curiosus is used occasionally in Cicero and Plautus, and that curiositas is used once in Cicero’s letters to Atticus (2.12.2), but that cupiditas is a much more common term before Apuleius. Meddlesomeness is primarily a theme in the Latin text, but not as strongly in the Greek epitome (Walsh, “The Rights and Wrongs,” 74–75). On Apuleius’s knowledge of Plutarch, see Joseph G. DeFilippo, “Curiositas and the Platonism of Apuleius’s Golden Ass,” The American Journal of Philology 111.4 (1990): 473–74.

[24] Gellius, Noct. Att. 11.16.2–4, 7–8, in which he offers De negotiositate as a heuristic title. See Joseph A. Howley, Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 23–31 on how Gellius uses this scene of a failed translation of peri polupragmonsunē to highlight the importance of educated Romans learning Greek.

[25] DeFilippo, “Curiositas,” 475, 489–90: “Lucius’s curiositas is portrayed as an ingrained and habitual aspect of his character, both before and after his transformation into an ass” (475). Kimberly B. Stratton, “Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature,” in Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, ed. Kimberly B. Stratton and Dayna S. Kalleres (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014), 159 on the relationship between femininity, magic, and the grotesque in the Metamorphoses. 

[26] Walsh, “The Rights and Wrongs,” 75 suggests that this passage subtly refers to Lucius’s lineage to Plutarch—that is, that a relative of the man who wrote On Being a Busybody should know better than to be caught up by curiositas. 

[27] Also see Apology 47.4; Against Marcion 2.21.2; On the Soul 2.4, 58.9. 

[28] See L. William Countryman, “Tertullian and the Regula Fidei,” JECS 2.4 (1982): 211–12. Countryman importantly notes that, for Tertullian, the regula is so central that it delimits interpretation of scripture. Inquiry into scriptural meaning––let alone inquiry into natural philosophy––is given a clear boundary and theological goal. 

[29] See also On Idolatry 9.1; Labhardt, “Curiositas,” 219.

[30] See Michelle Freeman, “Antithesis and Paradox in the Epistle to Diognetus,” VC 76 (2022): 37–59, esp. 42–44.

[31] H. F. Stander, “A Stylistic Analysis of Chapter 4 of the Epistle to Diognetus,” Acta Classica 27 (1984): 130–32.

[32] These four topics are nearly paralleled in Col 2.16. Cf. Michael F. Bird, “The Reception of Paul in the Epistle to Diognetus,” in Paul in the Second Century, LNTS 412, ed. Michael F. Bird and J. R. Dodson (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 76.

[33] Stander, “A Stylistic Analysis,” 131.

[34] For critiques of the Judaism-legalism stereotype, see David Lincicum, Ruth Sheridan, and Charles Stang, eds., Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, WUNT 420 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019); Amy-Jill Levine, “When the Bible Becomes Weaponized: Detecting and Disarming Jew-Hatred,” Studia Theologica (forthcoming 2021).

[35] This argument differs slightly from Jefford, Diognetus, 210–11, who sees the division between Hellenic and Jewish sacrificial practices as between those who worship empty objects and those who fail to understand the transcendence of God. 

[36] Jefford, Diognetus, 89, and 88–91 on potential echoes of passages from the Tanakh in Diognetus.

[37] Cf. Jefford, Diognetus, 213 summarizing the rhetorical argument of Diog. 4: “Why should a deity who is all-powerful and wise create a cosmos that needs further human refinement?”

[38] Hugh Bowden, “Before Superstition and After: Theophrastus and Plutarch on Deisidaimonia,” Past & Present 200.1 (2008): 56–71, quotes on 61–62.

[39] Michelle Freeman, “Antithesis and Paradox,” esp. 43–44, and elsewhere on Christians and Christianity as paradoxically right within the world.

[40] William Horst, “The Secret Plan of God and Imitation of God: Neglected Dimensions of Christian Differentiation in Ad Diognetum,” JECS 27.2 (2019): 161–83, quote on 169. Cf. Michael F. Bird and Kirsten H. Mackerras, “The Epistle to Diognetus & Fragment of Quadratus,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Michael F. Bird and Scott D. Harrower (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 309–331 who suggest that Diognetus’s Judaism “offers no preparation for Christianity” (319). 

[41] While not the focus here, Diog. 8.1–6 argues that philosophers’ arguments about what God is like are nonsense because they were proposed before God revealed himself through the Son, and thus are devoid of any actual knowledge of God’s being.

[42] Henry G. Meecham, The Epistle to Diognetus: The Greek Text with Introduction, Translation and Notes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1949), 20, 35–38 notes the lack of reference to the Hebrew Bible as an oddity, especially given its importance in the arguments of Justin, Athenagoras, and Theophilus. We primarily find Pauline and Johannine textual and theological influence (Jefford, Diognetus, 72–76).

[43] Rudolf Brändle, Die Ethik der “Schrift an Diognet”: Eine Wiederaufnahme paulinische und johanneischer Theologie am Ausgang des zweiten Jahrhunderts, Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testamentes 64 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 52–56; Jefford, Diognetus, 95–98.

[44] Brandon D. Crowe, “Oh Sweet Exchange! The Soteriological Significance of the Incarnation in the Epistle to Diognetus,” ZNW 102 (2011): 96–109, quote on 98. See also Josepht T. Lienhard, “The Christology of the Epistle to Diognetus,” VC 24 (1970): 280–89, esp. 285 on the division of time based on the coming of the Son; Meecham, Diognetus, 21; Bird and Mackerras, “The Epistle to Diognetus,” 322–23.

[45] Horst, “The Secret Plan of God,” esp. 169–75, quote on 169. Cf. Enrico Norelli, A Diogneto, Letture Cristiane del Primo Millennio 11 (Torino: Edizioni Paoline, 1991), 31–32 on Diognetus’s portrayal of Judaism suggesting that Jewish practices did not emerge from divine prerogative. 

[46] For a substantial list of citations from other apologists who offer supersessionist readings of Jewish scriptures that allow for some preincarnational knowledge about and from God, see Horst, “The Secret Plan of God,” 170. Diognetus’s extreme position compared to contemporaneous apologists is somewhat ironic given that the sole manuscript of the text was incorporated into a collection of writings attributed to Justin (Jefford, Diognetus, 15).

[47] See Michael Heintz, “Mimetes theou in the Epistle to Diognetus,” JECS 12.1 (2004): 107–19; Horst, “The Secret Plan of God,” esp. 176–82. On how Diognetus calls for divinely-imitative generosity comparable to contemporaneous elements of kingship ideology, see William Horst and Brian J. Robinson, “This Person Is an Imitator of God: Wealth, Philanthropia, and the Addressee of Ad Diognetum,” JECS 29.3 (2021): 309–39.

[48] For example, Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 686–716, quote on 710.

[49] See Clare Rothschild, “Diognetus and the Topos of the Invisible God,” in New Essays on the Apostolic Fathers, WUNT 375 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 213–26.

[50] Crowe, “Oh Sweet Exchange!,” esp. 100–7.