¹ Epiphanius is often referred to as Epiphanius “of Salamis,” although technically the city of Salamis had been destroyed by natural disaster and rebuilt as Constantia before Epiphanius's elevation to its episcopacy. The city was still apparently called “Salamis” at times: Epiphanius's younger contemporary Jerome refers to him as Cypri Salaminae episcopus (de viris inlustribus 114; vita Hilarionis prologus; epistula [ep.] 108.6); likewise the Greek historian Sozomen calls him Salami ∑αλαμῖνος τῆς Κύπρου ἐπίσκοπος (Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 6.32; 8.14). The persistence of “Salamis” as a designation may be due to its appearance in Acts 13:5.

² The entire treatise survives in Syriac (Epiphanius' Treatise on Weights and Measures: The Syriac Version, ed. Dean, James Elmer, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 11 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935]Google Scholar), with significant fragments of the original Greek (E. Moutsoulas, “Τὸ Περὶ μέτρων καί σταθμῶν ἔργον Ἐπιϕανίου τοῦ ∑αλαμῖνος Θεολογία, 44 [1973]: 157–98),” as well as selections in Georgian, (Les versions géorgiennes d'Épiphane de Chyphre, Traité des poids et de mésures, ed. Esbroeck, Michel van, CSCO 460–461 [Leuven: Peeters, 1984])Google Scholar and Armenian, (The Armenian Texts of Epiphanius of Salamis “De Mensuris et Pondibus,” ed. Stone, Michael and Ervine, Roberta, CSCO 583 [Leuven: Peeters, 2000]).Google Scholar I will cite primarily from the Greek and Syriac versions (using Dean's chapter numbers, English pages, and Syriac folio page numbers, with the lines of Moutsoulas's Greek in parentheses). On the interrelation of the texts, see Stone and Ervine, eds., Armenian Texts, 1–5.

³ That Aquila was a Christian before he was a Jew seems unique to Epiphanius's account: Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.21.1 refers to both Aquila and Theodotion simply as “Jewish proselytes” (θεοδοτίων ὁἘϕέσιος καὶ Ἀκύλας ὁΠονκός ἀμϕότεροι Ἰουδαῖοι προσήλυτοι). Ancient sources on the lives of the “Three” were collected by Swete, Henry, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 31–35Google Scholar (on Aquila), 42–44 (Theodotion), 49–51 (Symmachus); on more recent theories of their identities, see Jellicoe, Sidney, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 77–99Google Scholar; on a comparison of Jewish and Christian sources on Aquila specifically, see Labendz, Jenny R., “Aquila's Bible Translation in Late Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Perspectives,” Harvard Theological Review 102 (2009): 353–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Epiphanius, see Labendz, “Aquila's Bible Translation in Late Antiquity,” 381–83.

⁴ Epiphanius, De mensuris et pondibus 13–15 (Dean, Treatise, 29–32 [English], 54a–55b [Syriac]; Moutsoulas, lines 360–424). Aquila appears in rabbinic literature, as well, where his translation is tied more directly to rabbinic resistance to Greek (presumably, Christian use of the Septuagint). On the figure of Aquila in Christian and rabbinic tradition, see Seidman, Naomi, Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 73–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Labendz, “Aquila's Bible,” 354–70.

⁵ Pummer, Reinhard, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism: Texts, Translations, and Commentary, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 92 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar, notes that Epiphanius's ascription of a second circumcision to Samaritans becoming Jews (and vice versa) “is the only such account in ancient literature” (135) and, after considering rabbinic discussions of Samaritan proselytes to Judaism, suggests Epiphanius “may have fabricated this ‘information’” (137). Epiphanius is often cited here as evidence for the continued practice of epispasm, surgery to mask male circumcision: see Hall, Robert G., “Epispasm and the Dating of Ancient Jewish Writings,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2 (1988): 71–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Epiphanius, De mensuris et pondibus 16 (Dean, Epiphanius, 32–33 [English], 55c–55d [Syriac]; Moutsoulas, lines 429–48). Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.17 calls Symmachus an “Ebionite.”

⁷ Epiphanius, De mensuris et pondibus 17 (Dean, Epiphanius, 33 [English], 55d–56a [Syriac]; Moutsoulas, lines 450–56).

⁸ This quartet—hellenism, Judaism, Samaritanism, heresy—recalls the formative quartet of “mother heresies” in Epiphanius's Panarion (barbarism, hellenism, Scythism, Judaism). It is equally true, as Rajak, Tessa notes, “each of the ‘Three’ is assigned a role on the margins of Jewry” (Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible and the Ancient Jewish Diaspora [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009], 310).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ On the role of geography in Epiphanius's Panarion, see Young Richard Kim, “The Imagined Worlds of Epiphanius of Cyprus,” PhD Dissertation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006), 27–99.

¹⁰ Grafton, Anthony and Williams, Megan, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 85–132Google Scholar; Epiphanius's “polemical” envisioning of the order of the columns (to preserve the primacy of the Septuagint, at the center) is discussed on pages 92–94.

¹¹ Lieu, Judith, “‘Impregnable Ramparts and Walls of Iron’: Boundary and Identity in ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity,’” New Testament Studies 48 (2002): 297–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Boyarin, Daniel, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ “Borderlands” theory emphasizes the porosity and hybridity of cultural identities, and emerges from studies of Latino/a and Chicano/a culture on the U.S.-Mexican Border, see Anzaldua, Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1987)Google Scholar. It has been picked up recently by students of late antiquity, such as the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group (http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/research/borderlands.html, accessed June 5, 2011).

¹⁴ So Cook, Zeba, Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentlische Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 130 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004)Google Scholar, resists the “siren song of psychologism” (4) by reframing ancient conversion—specifically that of the apostle Paul—in the social context of patron-client relations. Cook, like many contemporary Pauline scholars, draws inspiration from Stendahl, Kirster, “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199–215.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The highly individualized framework of Nock, A. D., Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933)Google Scholar, remains highly influential (even when Nock himself is not cited). Nock, in turn, was greatly influenced by the psychological theories of religious formation of James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longman & Green, 1902)Google Scholar. On the influence that both Nock and James still hold over interpretations of conversion in antiquity, see Brown, Peter, “Conversion and Christianization in Late Antiquity: The Case of Augustine,” in The Past Before Us: The Challenge of Historiographies of Late Antiquity, eds. Straw, Carole and Lim, Richard (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 103–17Google Scholar. That Nock and his fellow ancient historians were drawn to a historical view of the high Roman Empire as a period of individual alienation (thus requiring a Jamesian psychologizing interpretation) has been carefully analyzed by Denzey, Nicola, “‘Enslavement to Fate,’ ‘Cosmic Pessimism,’ and Other Explorations of the Late Roman Psyche: A Brief History of a Historiographical Trend,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Réligieuses 33 (2004): 277–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Fredriksen, Paula, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 37 (1986): 3–34, esp. 26–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, following closely on Stendahl, “Paul.” In a later piece, Fredriksen calls for the “retirement” of the term “conversion” in studies of Paul: “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time to Go Has Come,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Réligieuses 35 (2006): 231–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ The exceptions are notable precisely for their rarity, particularly in comparison with the way in which modern people frame their introspective conversion narratives. On some of the more “classic” first-person narratives of conversion, see Nasrallah's, Laura discussion of Justin Martyr and Tatian, “The Rhetoric of Conversion and the Construction of Experience: The Case of Justin Martyr,” Studia Patristica 40 (2006): 467–74Google Scholar. The modern tendency to frame conversion as an entirely interiorized movement of the self was tackled sociologically by Stark, Rodney and Lofland, John, “Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective,” American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 863–74Google Scholar; for overview and critique, see Dawson, Lorne L., “Who Joins New Religious Movements and Why: Twenty Years of Research and What Have We Learned?” in Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, ed. Dawson, Lorne L. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 116–30Google Scholar; originally published in Studies in Religion/Sciences Réligieuses 25 (1996): 141–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Viswanathan, Gauri, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 17.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Recent studies of “conversion,” particularly in the ancient world, have certainly tried to dislodge Augustine's internalizing viewpoint: see, particularly, the two collections of essays by Mills, Kenneth and Grafton, Anthony: Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2003)Google Scholar and Conversion: Old Worlds and New (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2003).Google Scholar

²⁰ For a useful summary of historians' reactions to Epiphanius (almost uniformly negative), see Dechow, Jon, Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen, Patristic Monograph Series 13 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1988), 26–27.Google Scholar

²¹ Epiphanius's account of tearing down the curtain bearing an image “of Christ or one of his saints” led to his concatenation with other patristic sources as an authority for the iconoclasts in the eighth and ninth centuries: see Maraval, Pierre, “Épiphane, ‘Docteur des Iconoclastes,” in Nicée II, 787–1987: Douzes siècles d'images réligieuses, eds. Boespflung, F. and Lissky, N. (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 51–62Google Scholar; Parry, Kenneth, Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries, The Medieval Mediterranean 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 149–51Google Scholar; and Bugár, István, “Epiphanius of Salamis as a Monastic Author? The so-called Testimonium Epiphanii in the Context of Fourth-Century Spiritual Trends,” Studia Patristica 42 (2006): 73–81Google Scholar. Apart from some fragments, Epiphanius's letters are mostly preserved in Latin translations by Jerome (on the account of the curtain, see Jerome, ep. 51.9, where Epiphanius explains his desire to replace the curtain). I cite Jerome's letters from the critical edition of the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum (vols. 54–56); translations are my own.

²² Jerome, ep. 108.6.1, recounts Epiphanius's influence on the Roman matron Paula, who encountered the Cypriote bishop in Rome and was inspired to embrace a life of monasticism, and who continued to turn to Epiphanius for counsel throughout her life (as in Jerome, ep. 108.7.2, 21.2–3). The preface of the Ancoratus, a theological treatise written in the early 370s, shows that the work was written following the request of other clergy for Epiphanius's doctrinal insights. Similarly, the Panarion was composed at the request of foreign clergy.

²³ See Claudia Rapp, “The Vita of Epiphanius of Salamis: An Historical and Literary Study,” 2 vols. (D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1991).

²⁴ Gallagher, Eugene V., “Conversion and Community in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 1–15Google Scholar, provides a useful critique of the overly individual view of religion taken by Nock from James, and seeks to place the emphasis instead on community: “By emphasizing the connections between conversion and community life, I want to reintegrate the personal and institutional dimensions of conversion that James and Nock have kept separated” (3).

²⁵ Although his discussions of Constantine and other “orthodox” emperors are typically sympathetic and even laudatory, more significant, I think, is their unquestioned omnipresence in, for instance, the fabric of the Panarion. See now Kim, Young Richard, “Bad Heretics Corrupt Good Emperors: Ecclesiastical Authority and the Rhetoric of Heresy in the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis,” Studia Patristica 47 (2010): 161–66Google Scholar.

²⁶ See my discussion of the term “imperial” in Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity, Divinations (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 11–12.Google Scholar

²⁷ The concept of a “frontier zone” has been deployed in the history of religions by Chidester, David, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 20–26Google Scholar: “I define a frontier as a zone of contact, rather than a line, a border, or a boundary. By this definition, a frontier is a region of intercultural relations between intrusive and indigenous people. Those cultural relations, however, are also power relations. A frontier zone opens with the contact between two or more previously distinct societies and remains open as long as power relations are unstable and contested, with no one group or coalition able to establish dominance. A frontier zone closes when a single political authority succeeds in establishing its hegemony over the area” (20–21). See also Boyarin, Border Lines, 13–14, 202–9.

²⁸ Rapp, Claudia, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 37 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 141–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the political and rhetorical effects of monks protesting their ordination. Norton, Peter, Episcopal Elections, 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 191–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides a brief catalogue of forced, or coerced, ordinations, mostly from hagiography and mostly to the episcopacy. Epiphanius himself alludes to the threat of forced ordination in the long narrative Count Joseph, which I discuss below. In his later years, to avoid ordination by the local Arians after his wife's death (and lapsing into heresy), Joseph took a second wife (Pan. 30.5.8).

²⁹ Augustine of Hippo is another direct witness, on two counts: in a much later sermon, he recounts how he was more or less conscripted into the priesthood while visiting Hippo (sermo 355.2; his ordination took place in 391, this sermon was probably delivered toward the end of his life in the 420s); and in a thoroughly apologetic letter, Augustine narrates the narrowly averted forcible ordination of Pinian, husband of Melania the Younger, during their stay in North Africa following the sack of Rome: ep. 126 (written to Albina, Melania's mother; he also discusses the event in ep. 125 to his friend and episcopal colleague Alypius). On these twin events, see Kate Cooper, “Poverty, Obligation, and Inheritance: Roman Heiresses and the Varieties of Senatorial Christianity in Fifth-Century Rome,” Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900, eds. Cooper, Kate and Hillner, Julia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 165–89, at 165–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Although Epiphanius and other contemporary sources do not discuss the circumstance of his own ordination, his hagiography (from, perhaps, the late fifth century) presents Epiphanius's ordination to the priesthood as similarly forced and violent: Vita Epiphanii 60 (text in Rapp, “Vita of Epiphanius,” 2:126–28).

³¹ There is no sense in his letter about the amount of time that passed between Paulinian's diaconate and presbyterate: he notes that “I ordained one of the brothers deacon, and after he had ministered as such, admitted him to the priesthood” (ep. 51.1.3, emphasis added). Presumably the gap could have been as short as a single service, during which Paulinian was “convinced” to take up his diaconal duties.

³² Furthermore, in order to escape censure, it seems Paulinian took up “official” residence in Cyprus soon after: so Jerome, Contra Joannem Hierosolymitanum 41: “you see that he is with his own bishop, that he has returned to Cyprus, that he comes to visit us occasionally (interdum), not as one of yours, but another's (alienum), indeed, belonging to the one who ordained him.”

³³ Aetius should not be confused with the “Anomoioan” heretic condemned by Epiphanius in Pan. 76; this elder Aetius was bishop of Diospolis (Lydda/Lod) in the early fourth century, and a signatory at the Council of Nicaea. I cite from the critical edition of the Panarion in the Grieschichen christlichen Schriften series (3 vols.) edited by Karl Holl and revised by Jürgen Drummer. Translations of the Panarion are slightly modified from Williams, Frank, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 36 and 63 (Leiden: Brill, 1994 and 2009).Google Scholar

³⁴ Epiphanius's narrative is a bit confused in this section, but he seems to be telling a story of his own time as an abbot in Palestine, incorporating a small, local occasion of monastic heresy into the fabric of his heresiology. At the beginning of the chapter, he describes Peter (the heretic) living “in a certain cave” as a monk, drawing many admirers (Pan. 40.1.4), so it might seem he is merely living near Epiphanius's monastery when rebuked by Epiphanius; but it is only after Epiphanius's rebuke that Peter “took up residence in the cave” (Pan. 40.1.7), presumably continuing and intensifying a (false) monastic life begun under Epiphanius's leadership.

³⁵ See Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 44–55; Schott, Jeremy, “Heresiology as Universal History in Epiphanius's Panarion,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 10 (2006): 546–563CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kim, “Imagined Worlds,” passim.

³⁶ Viswanathan, Outside the Fold, 16.

³⁷ On the socially permeable boundaries between early Christian communities, see now Eshelman, Kendra, “Becoming Heretical: Affection and Ideology in Recruitment to Early Christianities,” Harvard Theological Review 104 (2011): 191–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ See Kim, Young Richard, “Reading the Panarion as Collective Biography: The Heresiarch as Unholy Man,” Vigiliae Christianae 64 (2010): 382–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which considers the broader biographical strands linking sections of the Panarion.

³⁹ Kim, “Imagined Worlds,” also looks at the biography of Mani, which is probably the longest heresiarchal biography in the Panarion (based, primarily, on the scurrilous Acta Archelai). While Mani's biography is certainly rife with failed boundaries—of geography, status, and orthodoxy—he operates on the margins of all of these borders, never inhabiting “orthodoxy” in the way Origen and Arius do before their conversions to heresy.

⁴⁰ See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism; Clark, Elizabeth, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 86–104Google Scholar; Lyman, Rebecca, “The Making of a Heretic: The Life of Origen in Epiphanius' Panarion 64,” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 445–51;Google ScholarLyman, Rebecca, “Origen as Ascetic Theologian: Orthodoxy and Authority in the Fourth-Century Church,” in Origeniana Septima, eds. Beinert, Wolfgang and Kühneweg, Uwe (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 187–94Google Scholar; Kim, “Imagined Worlds,” 118–49. Epiphanius's earliest extant treatise, the Ancoratus, singles out the teachings of Origen—particularly his anti-materialism and allegory—for refutation: Ancoratus 54–63 (I refer to the Grieschichen christlichen Schriften edition of Karl Holl).

⁴¹ Kim, “Imagined Worlds,” highlights the “denunciation of classical culture” (8) throughout Epiphanius's oeuvre, particularly in his attack on Origen (esp. 144–48); Lyman, “Origen,” also describes Epiphanius as “a man of limited education” (187) and sees in his attack on Origen a “populist” rejection of paideia (192–94). While it does seem clear that Epiphanius did not have formal philosophical education, it seems undeniable that he must have had grammatical and some rhetorical education; therefore, his attacks on “Hellenistic paideia” should be understood as themselves highly rhetorical devices.

⁴² Eusebius of Caesarea, a partisan of Origen, recounts the castration in Historia ecclesiastica 6.8.1, in terms that seem to indicate a more mechanical act on Origen's part, described twice as “an action” (τοὔργον, ἔργοις); certainly Epiphanius's younger contemporary Jerome envisioned something more straightforward: ferro truncaret genitalia (ep. 84.8). See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism (128–29), who highlights Epiphanius's “skepticism” about Origen's castration.

⁴³ Possibly Epiphanius means to say that Arius “emerged” at this time, but the Greek seems fairly clear: ἐγένετο δὲ οὗτος ὁ Ἄρειος ἐν χρόνοις Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ μεγάλου καὶ μακαρίτου βασιλέως, υἱοῦ Κωνσταντίου. Such dating would make Arius in Epiphanius's account in his teens and twenties at the height of his heretical mischief (especially since Epiphanius also antedates Arius's death by at least a decade: see further discussion below).

⁴⁴ The comparison is explicit in Pan. 68.6.9: “That night Arius went to the privy to relieve himself, and, like Judas once, burst. And thus his end came in a foul, unclean place.”

⁴⁵ Indeed, Epiphanius's testimony about Arius's advanced age in the 310s is often cited as evidence for dating Arius's birth to the 250s, as Williams, Rowan, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: SCM Press, 2001), 30.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ In the previous chapter on the Melitians, Epiphanius correctly notes that Arius lived for some time after the Council of Nicaea that anathematized him: Pan. 68.4.4–6, 6.7–9.

⁴⁷ It is possible that Ancoratus 102–7, a refutation of paganism that ends in an exhortation to priests and bishops ministering to ex-pagans, retains some germs of Epiphanius's own instruction to converts on giving up idolatry.

⁴⁸ In the earlier chapters of the Panarion, Epiphanius also discusses converts to Judaism (Pan. 20.1.5, 25.1.2), and one convert from Judaism to Samaritanism (Pan. 13.1.3). Epiphanius also describes Justin Martyr (who portrays himself in his Dialogue with Trypho as a Greek living in Samaria) as a convert to orthodoxy from “Samaritanism” (Pan. 46.1.3).

⁴⁹ Boyarin, Border Lines, 206–8.

⁵⁰ Epiphanius's hagiographers would claim that he had himself been raised Jewish until the age of sixteen, a claim that medieval and some modern scholars took at face value: Vita Epiphanii 3–10 (Rapp, “Vita of Epiphanius,” 2:51–60).

⁵¹ Washburn, D. A., “Tormenting the Tormentors: A Reinterpretation of Eusebius of Vercelli's Letter from Scythopolis,” Church History 78 (2009): 731–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives the historical context for Epiphanius's presence in Scythopolis in the early 360s; see also Stephen Goranson, “The Joseph of Tiberias Episode in Epiphanius: Studies in Jewish and Christian Relations,” Ph.D. Dissertation (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 1990) and “Joseph of Tiberias Revisited: Orthodoxies and Heresies in Fourth-Century Galilee,” in Galilee Through the Centuries: A Confluence of Cultures, Duke Judaic Studies 1, ed. Meyers, Eric M. (Winona Lake, Ill.: Eisenbrauns, 1999)Google Scholar, 335–43.

⁵² The memory of these texts, and Joseph's discovery of them, is the hook for Epiphanius's digression, after mentioning Ebionite use of Hebrew translations of the New Testament (Pan. 30.3.8–4.1).

⁵³ The son (whose name Epiphanius thinks might be Judas [Pan. 30.7.2]) had seen the Christian woman in a bath; he and a friend attempted to cast spells on her, but she was protected by the “sign and faith of Christ,” teaching Joseph that “where Christ's name was, and the sign of his cross, the power of sorcery did not prevail” (Pan. 30.8.10).

⁵⁴ Viswanathan, Outside the Fold, 26.

⁵⁵ As Boyarin notes: “All of the formerly orthodox Jews have now become orthodox Christians, a conversion portrayed as without remainder.” Border Lines, 213,

⁵⁶ Epiphanius's De gemmis does not survive in the original Greek: an Old Georgian version appears to be our oldest witness, along with Armenian, Latin, and Coptic fragments. The much-abbreviated Latin version was printed in Patrologia Graeca 43:322–66, and a slightly fuller version in Corpus scriptorum ecclasiasticorum 35:743–73; the Georgian and other fragments are available, with an introduction, in Epiphanius's “De Gemmis”: The Old Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version, ed. Blake, Robert P., Texts and Studies (London: Christopher's, 1934)Google Scholar. I cite from Blake's English translation of the Old Georgian (by page and line number). The first half of the treatise is an antiquarian and naturalist overview of the twelve stones (their origins, uses, and so forth); the second half of the treatise uses each stone, and its association with a particular son of Israel, as a launching pad for a more wide-ranging work of exegetical contemplation.

⁵⁷ Two other gems are explicitly associated with apostles as well as Hebrew patriarchs in the second half of De gemmis: the red topaz is associated with Simeon and Judas Iscariot (124–25) while the green emerald is associated with Levi and John the evangelist (127–28). All of Epiphanius's interpretations of the gems involve thick intertextuality between Old and New Testaments, particularly the gospels.

⁵⁸ Blake, De gemmis, 169, lines 10–14.

⁵⁹ Blake, De gemmis, 169, lines 21–24.

⁶⁰ Blake, De gemmis, 167, line 15–168, line 16; 170, lines 4–13.

⁶¹ Blake, De gemmis, 170, lines 5, 12–13; the reference seems to be Ps 68:27.

⁶² Nock, Conversion, 7.

⁶³ James, Varieties, 189.

⁶⁴ On the expansion of “conversion” to include changes of status within Christianity, see Muldoon, James, “Introduction: The Conversion of Europe,” in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997), 1–10Google Scholar, where he speaks of a “conversion spectrum” (1).

⁶⁵ A good summary of such work, incorporating theoretical work on “frontiers,” may be found in Cherry, David, Frontier and Society in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24–74.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Cherry, Frontier and Society, 27. Cherry's model is primarily economic (the Romans' “only identifiable policy in the [North African] frontier-zone is one of ‘exploitation’” [74]), but he also signals his openness to cultural models. In this he follows the important work of Whittaker, C. R., much of which is condensed in his “Frontiers,” in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192, eds. Bowman, Alan, Garnsey, Peter, Rathbone, Dominic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 293–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar