Why does Saint Paul mention the Scythians?

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:11)

In terms of ancestry, I am genetically related to a number of different peoples who lived in Late Antiquity: the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Cherusci, the Chatti, the Thuringii, the Langobardi (all Germanic peoples), the Gauls and Britons (both Celts) and the Pannonian Illyrians. One tribe among my ancestors, however, stands out: the Scythians. The Scythians were a nomadic people who lived in the Caucasus Mountains around what is now Georgia and southern Russia; as they expanded, their territory extended across the Pontic Steppe as far as Moldova and Romania to the west, and to the east as far as Kazakhstan. Like most nomadic peoples of the time, they were a motley crew, and probably included diverse elements including Iranian, Turkic, Finnic-Ugric and Caucasian. Their rule extended briefly into Asia Minor; later on, a number of allied tribes emerged from what had been the Scythian Empire: the Sauromatæ, the Massagetæ, the Cimmerians and the Saka, or Sai. The Alans (or Yancai), the nomadic people who invaded Europe along with the Huns and from whom the modern culture of the Ossetians descends, were themselves a scion of the Scythian stem.

The great question is: why did Saint Paul include the Scythians in this passage in Colossians?

To answer that question, we need to understand first the connotation that term Σκυθης had to the Greek-speaking audience that Saint Paul was addressing. To the Greeks, and to the entirety of the Roman Empire in fact, the Scythians were the penultimate barbarians. From the Greek perspective, the Scythians were seen as savages: ruthless, cruel, inebriated, undisciplined, lacking in restraint. They were purported to drink the blood of their enemies and fashion the skulls of those they killed into drinking-vessels. The Greeks often used the imagery of wild animals to describe the Scythians.

But the relationship of the Greeks to the Scythians was more complex than this. Scythian culture was as often an object of desire or wistful longing. For example, the Greek myth of the Amazons was probably derived from the way Scythian (specifically Sauromatae) women would wear weapons and armour and participate in war. There was thus an element of sexual exoticism that accompanied the Scythians. In other places, Scythians were often cast in the role of the ‘noble savage’: free from the constraints of civilisation and thus in a permanent state of childlike innocence. In a word, the Greek attitude toward the Scythians may be described as a progenitor or as an early example of orientalism.

As Saint Paul was both an educated Jew and a Roman citizen, we should not imagine that he was ignorant of any portion of this context, or that his choice of the word Σκυθης in this list was accidental. On one level, we may take it as read that there were Scythians among the members of the Early Church; there’s not really any reason to doubt, given the presence of Scythians in Asia Minor, that Saint Paul was not speaking literally here. But on another level, the inclusion of Σκυθης points to a much deeper element in the Pauline discourse. Given what the Scythians represented to the Greek audience he was addressing, Paul’s explicit inclusion of them in his description of the Church and its members is an implicit rebuke of these orientalist or proto-orientalist attitudes among them. Just as Greeks did not have to undergo circumcision to be included in the ἐκκλησία, so Paul is saying, nor did Jews have to give up their identities as Jews to be included in the ἐκκλησία, so too were barbarians welcome as long as they were sincere in following Christ. Even Scythians were welcome in the ἐκκλησία, without having to be Hellenised first!

Does any of this sound familiar?

These days there is a marked increase in orientalist discourse on account of the world organising itself into a ‘harder’ NATO bloc, the ‘West’, aligned firmly against ‘the rest’, most notably against Russia and against China. It is disingenuous to pretend that the facts are otherwise. It is also disingenuous to pretend that Russian and Chinese people are not the objects of orientalist fantasising on the part of the West, even in the present day, or that Ukrainian nationalist discourse (fervently stoked by NATO actors) isn’t deliberately invoking these orientalist tropes as part-and-parcel of its anti-Russian pathos.

Saint Paul would reject all of this, utterly. He would reject out-of-hand the a priori assumptions of both Ukrainian nationalism and the aggressive Western, particularly American and British, chauvinism against Russia and China. He rejected them in his own day, as Colossians 3:11 makes plain. Saint Paul was neither in the business of ‘defending the West’, nor of ‘defending democracy’. He was not in the business of defeating the enemies of Rome by force, no matter how ‘barbaric’ they were. Nor was he even in the business of converting the ‘barbarians’ to either a Greek or a Jewish civilisational standard. He was in the business of bringing the good news of Christ—who was both Jewish and Roman, as well as being an outlaw to both worlds when He was put to death on the Cross—to the world, barbarians, even Scythians, and by extension those even further east, very much included.

Saint Ilya Fondaminskii-Bunakov, himself a Jew by ancestry, provocatively suggested that Christianity was the spiritual response, even the ‘revenge’, of the awakened East against the false, pretentious, homogenising universalisms of Greek and Roman civilisation. Intriguingly, he even referred specifically to the Scythians as a formative ‘Eastern’ influence on the Russian state. In our own day, we need to recover this insight with regard to the false, pretentious, homogenising universalism of the American imperium. Our own imperium elevates to godhead not necessarily a Cæsar or a god-emperor (though we do have people with such pretensions, for which irony is but a flimsy excuse). Instead we promote a set of falsely-universal ideals (whether bourgeois democracy, capitalism, industrialism, even shallow identitarian ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity-equity-inclusion’) in whose name that imperium is enforced through economic, political and military violence. If we are to take Saint Paul’s admonition to the Colossians seriously, then we should prepare a world, at the very least an ἐκκλησία in which Russians are free to be Russians, Chinese are free to be Chinese, Iranians are free to be Iranians, Syrians to be Syrians, Vietnamese to be Vietnamese, Indigenous to be Indigenous—not with any chauvinism or pretensions to grandeur attached, for in Christ and His kingdom such worldly distinctions are devoid of importance, but in the full depth of their cultural belonging.

Христос Воскресе!

Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе! (Church Slavonic)
Христос шэнтэ! Вӯййкэсьтан шэнтэ! (Kildin Sámi)
Чырысти райгас! Æцæгæй райгас! (Ossetian)
Христос чĕрĕлнĕ! Чăн чĕрĕлнĕ! (Chuvash)
Христос бунидиэни дидюхэ! Тэде бунидиэни дидюхэ! (Hezhen)

Prophets, not without honour

Marianna Vyshemirskaya, Faina Savenkova, Ekaterina Ershova

The Gospel reading from Holy Tuesday’s Matins service was from that of Saint Matthew, chapters 22 and 23. In it, our Lord pronounces woe upon the scribes and Pharisees. He speaks of how they devour widows’ houses, but make long prayers for show. He speaks of how they travel land and sea to win one convert, but then make that convert twice as much a child of hell as themselves. He speaks of how they dishonour the Temple by saying that it is not the Temple which is sacred, but rather the gold which is sanctified within it. They strain gnats but swallow camels. They clean the outside of the dish, but leave the inside filthy. He speaks of how they tithe mint and anise and cumin, but neglect the weightier matters of justice and mercy and faith. And He speaks of how they venerate the prophets of days past with much pomp and splendour, but then kill and scourge and crucify and persecute the prophets and wise which come before them. In this, Jesus Christ calls to mind His own earlier words, in Matthew 13, of how the prophets are not without honour, save in their own land and in their own house.

Am I not guilty of all of these things myself? Do I not make outward shows of piety and righteousness, while my own eyes are full of sin, and my own body is full of darkness? When I show up at church in my best clothes, but the inside of my own soul is full of lust and despair and rage, what right do I have to speak? What right do I have to expect Jesus to recognise me as His own, when I am not at peace with myself, and when I struggle to make peace even with my family and friends who love me?

And more, is not our own nation guilty, and will we not all stand guilty before Jesus Christ, as we have destroyed and expelled the prophets who are sent to us? On NPR this morning, in light of the recent Discord leaks, they spoke of Edward Snowden and Pvt Chelsea Manning, not in terms of the right and wrong of what they exposed to the light of day, but only in terms of how they embarrassed the United States, and of their guilt, which was assumed. And all of this, while Australian citizen Julian Assange remains in prison, merely for speaking about what even the governments whose secrets he leaked to the public acknowledge is true.

I had cause to think about prophets who are not without honour save in their own land, when I saw the video of Ekaterina Ershova (pictured at right above), kneeling down in silent prayer on the concrete in front of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, while she is surrounded by a throng of jeering, mocking hooligans prancing around her in unholy jubilation at the eviction of the Lavra’s monks. She is to me a model of faith. Evidently she was seized by the SBU (security services) after she was taken away from the Lavra; her social media accounts have been deactivated and her family haven’t heard from her since. What is she if not a prophetess?

And I also thought about the ‘Madonna of Mariupol’, Marianna Vyshemirskaya (pictured at left above). She was all over the news after an AP report which reported on a Russian air raid on a Mariupol maternity hospital. She had the misfortune to be in that hospital while the AP camera crews were there. She came in for unwarranted vituperation from Russian netizens on account of this alone. And then when she spoke up about what had truly happened to her when she was taken out of the hospital—that there had been no air raid and that she’d been photographed without her explicit permission—all of a sudden it was the Ukrainian nationalists who reviled her and cursed her, and clamoured for her and her child to be put to death. Her name was added to the infamous Myrotvorets database. She is to me a model of patience. Despite all that she has had to endure, she is not bitter, but rather continues to focus on raising her daughter and being of service to her community near Donetsk.

And then I also thought of Faina Savenkova (pictured above in the centre), the teenage poetess and science-fiction author. She is to me a model of honesty and truth-telling. She has been talking about the war that has been taking place in her home for the past nine years. She talks about being one of the ‘wrong children’, ‘born and living in the wrong place’ (like children in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Palestine), one of the children on the ‘wrong side’ of a line drawn by political operatives in Kiev in 2014. And the Ukrainian government continues to want to silence her for talking about it.

Like the three youths in the Book of Daniel, these three young women have bravely refused to bow to the graven images and idols of nationalism. They have so far refused to glorify the worldly Nebuchadnezzar over God. And for that, the powers of this world, including the powers which rule us here in the West, would consign them to the fiery furnace. The nation which proclaims ‘glory’ to itself, and ‘glory to heroes’, refuses to honour the prophets which are sent to it.

But the fiery furnace is not the end—even Daniel could see that. The prophets are not without honour in the kingdom to come. Lazarus was raised. There is a Resurrection. We shall see it, three days from now. Today we see the powers of this world—the imperial power of Babylon, the gravitas and military main of Rome—exercise their judgement upon the just Judge, and heap blame upon the blameless One. Tomorrow we shall see Him put to rest in the tomb. But come midnight, the day after tomorrow, we shall see the tomb lying empty: glory to God.

Pointed video post – ‘Киевская Русь’ by Big History

Back in 2005, Ukrainian melodic heavy metal band Big History put out their first and only album Perpetuum Mobile. The title of one of their songs on that album is literally “Kievan Rus’”. Here are the full lyrics to the song:

Будущего вряд ли хватит что бы прошлое объять,
А вдруг солнце на закате повернет сегодня в спять.
Грянет гром и лопнет небо чрева тайны обнажив,
Тайны прадедов и дедов ты мне чрево расскажи.
Как хватало их терпенья мудро и достойно ждать и
до последнего мгновенья врага ближе подпускать.

Время, стерпит, все стерпит и простит –
Забудет на всегда...
Солнце, светит на Киевской Руси и горе не беда, если все как один всегда.
Точит меч словян и не угостит огонь тысяч душ Киевской Руси.
Я несу свой крест, радость и в грусть,
Мне с тобой тепло Киевская Русь.

Горы в прошлое стремятся , будущего не бояться, нам
Завещано судьбой, пусть разрушать мы отстроим,
А хотят войны то к бою, нам собраться не в первой.
Утро - вечера мудрее, а призыв еще сильнее "Встань!"
Опять плетется сеть. Алчных, потных и строптивых,
Хитро-мудро нагло лживых норм, придется поучить
"Нет сил тепеть!"

Время, стерпит, все стерпит и простит –
Забудет на всегда...
Солнце, светит на Киевской Руси и горе не беда, если все, как один всегда.
Точит меч словян и не угостит огонь тысяч душ Киевской Руси.
Я несу свой крест, радость и в грусть,
Мне с тобой тепло Киевская Русь.

I’m not going to provide a full translation here, but Google does a fairly good job getting the gist. One thing that stands out about such a folk/power metal song is that the historical consciousness of Big History is not romantic or glorious, in no way nationalistic. This song is elegiac in tone, and laments how little has been learned since the heyday of the Kievan polity. It also acknowledges the ‘warmth’ of that time despite how the reality failed to match up to the ideal.

Big History broke up after this album. The main guitarist Evgenii Burykh and vocalist Viktor Vlasov formed the band Берег Неба, which was also located in Krasnodon, while the drummer Rodion Kushnir moved to Berdyans’k. Not sure what happened to bassist Igor Levchenko. The band members, who have this deep and tragic awareness of history, ultimately sided with the autonomists in the Donbass against the Ukrainian government, in part because of the critical love of their homeland which this song displays. The current war displays the same tendencies that Big History laments in ‘Киевская Русь’.

Encouragement to new believers in other lands

Father Artemy Vladimirov, a popular Moscow-area priest, gave several interviews, epistles and other writings over the course of about twenty years while he was rector at All Saints’ Church in Moscow, which have a particular importance to an American audience. These were very kindly translated, compiled and edited by Sister Nectaria (McLees) and published by the Road to Emmaus journal as a single volume in 2010: Bright Faith.

One of the major draws of Bright Faith, at least for me, is the fact that Fr Artemy has a warm and understanding sense of humour. (Speaking of humour, Fr Artemy advises us to look at the motivation. He has little use for cynical or belittling humour, the sorts of laughter that cut others down, but he speaks very highly of self-deprecation and situational humour.) He clearly ministers to people who come from outside of Russia, and embraces them with empathy even while he also very much loves his own country. He is also, in a manner I’ve personally found to be the case with many Moscow Patriarchate priests, down-to-earth, approachable, genuine and sensible—without compromising on matters of importance to the faith. He sometimes advocates a kind of ‘tough love’ with people who aren’t sincere in their spiritual demands on him, but it’s love all the same. He also understands the temptation and pull of the ‘hyperdox’ tendency, and gently urges moderation in its place.

Fr Artemy firmly champions the traditional nature of the Orthodox faith. He cautions against the consumption of popular media, and he urges young people in particular to embrace chastity with burning zeal. However, there are times when he comes down firmly on the ‘left’ side of things. He has high words of praise, for example, for the radical anarchist priest and new martyr Saint Valentin (Sventsitskii), whom he cites as ‘one of the most interesting writers of the century’. Writing as he did during the 1990s, he laments the disappearance of government assistance programmes for the poor and the destruction of the social fabric in Russia, which accompanied the fall of communism. Even though he has very little good to say about the atheistic Soviet state or its ideologues, he still has a heart which is clearly moved by the people—widows and orphans—who were dispossessed by the ruthless cutthroat gangster capitalism which took its place.

One thing Fr Artemy is very good at in this collection of essays, is referring people to works by other authors whom he considers to be better informed and better suited to guide seekers than himself. Fr Artemy is not being falsely modest here—his perspective is informed by a historical understanding that the startsy in ages past were much more spiritually-refined than the present-day teachers, who seem to have all but disappeared. He is hopeful, however, that people who earnestly seek guidance will find it in the writings of the Russian bishops of the nineteenth century. Fr Artemy is particularly fond, it seems, of St Feofan the Recluse, Bishop of Tambov, and St Ignatii Brianchaninov, Bishop of the Caucasus and Stavropol. He recommends these bishops’ writings precisely because they are practical, and they do address questions which are applicable to the day-to-day life of new believers.

As a teacher, I was particularly gratified to note how well-attuned Fr Artemy is to the character and spiritual needs of young people. He talks about this at length in one of his essays, specifically about the spiritual life of teenagers. He strikes a very fine balance between the need for discipline (which all children do crave, at some level, for a sense of security) and the need for gentle guidance in self-motivated growth in the faith. Once again, he makes reference to St Feofan here: clearly there are some writings which I need to follow up on from this one. Fr Artemy’s Lenten reflections, as well, are of particular use and guidance to people approaching the sacrament of Confession.

This book is one I’d recommend, not necessarily to catechumens or the curious, but absolutely to new believers who are looking for a nudge in the right direction. Fr Artemy is a healthy and sane voice amid an English-language Orthodox Christian literary and social media landscape riddled with various neuroses and unhealthy fixations. Many thanks are owed to Nun Nectaria (McLees) and the folks at Road to Emmaus for making this volume available in English!

歌罢仰天叹

群鸡正乱叫
客至鸡斗争
驱鸡上树木
始闻叩柴荆
父老四五人
问我久远行
手中各有携
倾榼浊复清
苦辞酒味薄
黍地无人耕
兵革既未息
儿童尽东征
请为父老歌
艰难愧深情
歌罢仰天叹
四座泪纵横

- 杜甫，《羌村（3）》

Translation:

The flock of chickens starts to call wildly,
As guests arrive, the chickens begin to fight.
I drive the chickens up into the tree,
And now I hear the knock on the wicker gate.
Four or five elders from the village,
Ask how long and far I have been travelling.
Each of them brings something in his hands,
We pour the clear and thick wine in together.
They apologise because it tastes so thin,
There’s no one no-one left to tend the millet fields.
Conscription still continues without end,
The children are campaigning in the east.
I ask if I can sing a song for the elders,
The times so hard, I’m ashamed by these deep feelings.
I finish the song, look to heaven and sigh,
Everyone around is freely weeping.

- Du Fu, Qiang Village III

The Prayer of a Broken Heart: a review

Fr Paul Abernathy’s new book, The Prayer of a Broken Heart, is a splendidly multifaceted exploration—from a perspective rooted in the Orthodox Christian tradition—of the religious history and spiritual character of African slaves in America and their descendants. Speaking as a white American Orthodox Christian, I’m sure that what I got out of it would be very different than what a black American would get out of it. And I’m sure that a ‘cradle’ Orthodox Christian from within one of the traditionally-religious immigrant communities that came here after slavery had been abolished would get something else entirely out of it. However, the fact that The Prayer of a Broken Heart has something to say to each of these groups is a mark of its strengths. Although it is an adaptation of his seminary master’s thesis, precisely as a work of religious history it stands firmly on its own merits.

The Prayer of a Broken Heart may be said to have three strands. The first strand is an apologia of African-American Christianity as an, if not the, authentic and valid expression of African-American culture (as opposed to being a ‘white man’s religion’ or a ‘slaveowner creed’ foisted upon the slaves by their masters). The second strand is a portrait of African-American spirituality as it was formed through and the experiences of slavery, race-based terrorism, segregation and informal discrimination. And the third strand is an exploration of the commonalities between the African-American religious experience and the historical witness of the Orthodox Church. Interspersed through all of these strands are the accounts of pastoral experiences Fr Paul himself has had, working as a priest in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The men and women whom he encounters have lives shaped by profound grief and loss. But that same suffering leads them, just as it has led many generations of their ancestors, before the Cross.

The historical aspect of the book is logically presented and carefully argued from primary source materials—slave narratives in particular. Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Charles Ball, Josiah Henson, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown and others are given space to speak in their own words from their own experiences. If Fr Paul’s authorial voice is somewhat more distant in these passages, that is all to his credit, as these narratives have their own power. The picture he draws out of these narratives is one which complicates and deflates both triumphalist-panglossian white accounts of slavery as a ‘civilising mission’, and anti-Christian tendencies in black-nationalist thought that portray Christianity as a ‘white man’s religion’. It becomes quite clear in these accounts that slave-owners had no interest whatsoever in edifying their slaves or leading them to Christianity. Their sole interest in their slaves was as productive property. In fact: slave-owners feared slaves’ expressions of religiosity, as the prayers of slaves were a powerful implicit witness to their spiritual equality before God.

Slave-owners were known to hold dances and parties with music and secular entertainments for their slaves to keep them ‘happy’. But religious gatherings were feared and forbidden. It was common for slave-owners to have slaves beaten cruelly or even killed for praying. Slaves would therefore organise prayer meetings in ‘hush harbours’: backwoods or basement locations hidden from the eyes of masters and overseers. For two hundred years, African-American Christianity was by necessity an ‘invisible institution’—a phrase borrowed from the religious historian Albert J Raboteau, whom Fr Paul Abernathy quotes at length. The message that he draws from this is clear: African-American Christianity, far from being received by slaves from masters, was attained and held in spite of the suppression of Christianity by their masters. Fr Paul tells us outright that the first records we have of slaves converting in any significant number to Christianity occurred during the first Great Awakening, when ‘New Light’ itinerant preachers would draw mixed-race crowds to revival meetings… often over the strenuous objections of the supine ‘Old Light’ pastors who were the representatives of the slave-owners’ religion.

This leads Fr Paul to open a descriptive account of the character of the Christianity of black America. Because it was an ‘invisible institution’—a church of the catacombs, shaped by the ever-present reality of persecution—it quickly became characterised by a radical trust in the will of God; an extended hope of justice however long deferred; a reliance upon the power of prayer; deference to the witness of elders who had experienced God’s action in their own lives; and an emphasis on salvific suffering and the openness of a ‘broken heart’ to God.

This provides an opening for Fr Paul Abernathy to explore the parallels between the African-American religious experience and Orthodox theology. To a certain extent, he counts on the Orthodox Christian section of his audience to have a great enough familiarity with the rudiments of hesychasm and the words of Psalm 50 to make certain connexions on their own. But he deftly illustrates how the sublative, broken-hearted and penitential character of African-American Christianity shares fundamental similarities with Orthodoxy—drawing upon numerous Patristic writings from Saint Isaac of Nineveh through Saint Gregory Palamas to Saints Silouan of Athos and Sophrony of Essex for demonstration.

Here Fr Paul Abernathy has a much clearer and direct case to make for a connexion than does, say, Hieromonk Damascene Christensen in Christ the Eternal Tao. Fr Paul has enough respect for the tradition he examines to acknowledge the clear differences between it and the Orthodox tradition. At the same time, though, he makes an honest appeal for the Orthodox ‘case’ with African-Americans. He notices in the remnants of African religion which were carried over into Christianity still more similarities with Orthodoxy: communality, the person as a web of relationships, the closeness of the human world to the Divine. And he notes in the tradition of African-American Christianity certain unmet needs and expectations in itself, most notably: a desire for self-denial, for discipline (explaining the appeal of the Nation of Islam), for mystical communion with God. And he argues that the Orthodox Church is capable of meeting these needs and expectations, as Protestant churches are quickly finding themselves deficient of these things.

Ultimately, though, this book is a labour of love. I use that term advisedly. Fr Paul Abernathy is not a nationalist of any sort: indeed, he considers pride (including national pride) to be the very source of many of the ills which the love of Christ must heal. For him, the most salient and salvific features of African-American Christianity are its insistence on forgiveness and on love of enemies: both insistences which are shared by the best aspects of Orthodox Christianity. And it is clear that he himself speaks from a position of love, even when he issues criticism.

His analysis is not without its critical dimension. Although he has nothing but words of praise for the musical tradition of the black spiritual (that true cry from the bottom of a broken heart, expressed in a cappella harmony!), he waxes particularly critical of modern African-American culture when it comes to popular music and consumption habits. He considers much of modern black musical and popular culture to be a form of propaganda which weakens the spirit—in much the same way as the secular dances and parties held by the slave-owners kept their slaves docile. I was rather surprised and a bit dismayed to read the harsh words he had even for blues and rock-‘n’-roll music, both of which (instrument-driven, individualistic, disillusioned and worldly) he views as a qualitative falling-away from the otherworldly hope and communal fellow-suffering epitomised by the spirituals.

Many thanks to Fr Paul Abernathy for publishing this work in a form which makes it available to a broad audience outside the academy. The Prayer of a Broken Heart is very much worth the time taken to read. For American Orthodox Christians in particular (and anyone interested in the history of American religion and constructive modern approaches to race relations generally), it is an excellent source to ingest, to ponder, and to begin conversations from.