Apostasy

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APOSTASY

APOSTASY is derived from the Greek apostasia, a secondary form of apostasis, originally denoting insurrection or secession (Acts 5:37). In the sense of "rebellion against God" it had already been used in the Septuagint (Jos. 22:22). The Christians of the third century definitely fixed its usage to the meaning of abandonment of Christianity for another religion, especially paganism (Cyprian, Epistula 57.3.1). The Christian usage of the term provides its essential elements: apostasy occurs in public and not in private, and apostates abandon an exclusive and institutionalized religion for another. In this sense apostasy is subject to specific historical conditions. It occurs when different religions compete with each other in one public arena. This essay will distinguish three aspects: occurrences of apostasy; legal sanctions with regard to apostates; and expectations of an apocalyptic desertion of the true religion at the end time.

Apostasy in Jewish Ritual Law

Clear instances of apostasy are first found in Hellenistic Judaea. The very notion of hellenismos was coined for the conflict that occurred in the Jewish community under Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria (r. 176–165 bce). It began when the Jewish high priest Jason "abolished the constitution based on laws and introduced new customs contrary to these laws" (2 Mc. 4:11). He founded a gymnasium and an institution for training ephēboi, or young men. Everyone who passed could then be enrolled in the register of citizens of Antiochea, the new name for Jerusalem (2 Mc. 4:9). A "passion for Hellenism" and "an influx of foreign customs" swept over the country (2 Mc. 4:13). The Maccabean adversaries of the hellenismos fought in their turn for the iudaismos (2 Mc. 2:21). The struggle between these two adversaries intensified in 167 bce, when the next Jewish high priest, Menelaus, succeeded in convincing the Seleucid ruler "to compel the Jews to abandon their fathers' religion" (Josephus Flavius, Jewish Antiquities 12.384), and the ruler ordered the abandonment of the Jewish law (1 Mc. 1:44–53, 2 Mc. 6:1ff.). At first, abandonment of the Jewish law occurred without any oppression by the rulers, and spontaneous apostasy recurred sporadically in later times. Well known is the case of the nephew of the Jewish philosopher Philo, Tiberius Alexander, a politician serving in the Roman state, "who did not stand by the practices of his people" (Josephus, Antiquities 20.100). There are also some instances of Alexandrian Jews adopting Greek philosophy. For the sake of political alliances with pagans, Jews were willing to abandon circumcision, food rules, and Sabbath laws. Intermarriage with pagans and shifting intellectual interests were among the reasons for their deviation from ancestral practices (Feldman, 1993, pp. 79–83).

The Book of Daniel, written between 167 and 163 bce, made Jewish apostasy part of the apocalyptic drama. At the end of time, it stated, there will be Jews abandoning the holy covenant (Dn. 11:30). The pre-Maccabean Apocalypse of Weeks clung to the same idea: "After that in the seventh week an apostate generation shall arise, its deeds shall be many and all of them criminal" (1 En. 93:9). Apostasy is assessed not only in religious terms but also in moral and political ones. Abandonment of belief is near to treason and crime. Similarly, treason is rejected for religious reasons. When the historian Josephus Flavius, as commander of Galilean insurgents, was suspected of treason in 66 ce, his chief adversary told the people: "If you cannot, for your own sakes, citizens, detest Josephus, fix your eyes on the ancestral laws (patrioi nomoi), which your commander-in-chief intended to betray, and for their sakes hate the crime and punish the audacious criminal" (Josephus, The Life 135). The Jewish notion of the martyr reflects the same set of beliefs from a different perspective: due to his loyalty to the ancestral laws, the martyr is assured of resurrection to life (2 Mc. 7:14). His death is at the same time "an example of high-mindedness and a memory of virtue" (2 Mc. 6:31). If religion and citizenship are fused, the apostate who abandons the religion of his ancestors is regarded as a traitor. He is virtually the domestic ally of the external enemy.

Apostasy needed to be legally regulated. Since the first century bce Jewish communities outside Israel were established as recognized associations either under Roman law or under the law of independent cities. Their communities were recognized as "collegia"—the Latin notion for these associations—or as "politeuma" and practiced internal jurisdiction. Jews who were responsible for civic unrest could be tried and punished by the officials of these bodies. The conflicts between Jews and Christians therefore affected legal issues. Paul was portrayed by Jewish opponents as teaching apostasy from Moses (Acts 21:21). When Paul complained: "Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one" (2 Cor. 11: 24), he refers to a punishment, inflicted by Jewish authorities according to their ancestral laws (Dt. 25:2). What Paul experienced as a persecution was from a different point of view, as E. P. Sanders rightly noticed, as a legal prosecution (Sanders, 1986, p. 86).

Apostasy was subject of religious reflection. "Whole Israel has a share in the world to come.… And these don't have a share in the world to come: whoever says, 'There is no resurrection of the dead in the Torah' and 'There is no Torah from heaven,' and the Epicurean" (San. 10:1). The apostate is denied salvation by the Pharisees. About 100 ce the twelfth prayer of the so-called eighteen benedictions was expanded with the birkat haminim ("the blessing over the heretics"). The oldest wording of that prayer is found in a version discovered in the Cario Geniza: "And for apostates let there be no hope; and may the insolent kingdom be quickly uprooted, in our days. And may Nazarenes [Christians] and the Minim [heretics] perish quickly; and may they be erased from the Book of life" (Schürer, 1979, pp.454–463). This amplification implies that apostates had earlier been cursed in Jewish divine service. Since the Babylonian recension of the prayer does not mention either the Nazarenes or the Minim, it is a matter of controversy whether the early form of the prayer actually refered to Christians at all. Later Christian literature corroborates that after the fall of the temple Jews cursed Christians in the synagogues. Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, relates that Jews were cursing in their synagogues those that believe in Christ (16, 4). But only after the third century ce did the rabbis possess the legal power to expel dissidents from Judaism; previously this power rested with the local Jewish communities.

The Gospel of John, which originated in Asia Minor, mentions several times the expulsion of Christians from synagogues (9:22, 12:42, 16:2–3). The Jewish communities of Asia Minor and other parts of the Roman Empire had been granted the privilege to form associations (sunodos) of their own in accordance with their ancestral laws and to decide on their own affairs and settle controversies. In the Gospel of John, the term sunagogē refers also to the community as a whole and not to a building. A Jewish community could withdraw the membership from Christian apostates in its politeuma.

Apostasy in Greek and Roman Public Cults

Conversion was unknown in Greek and Roman religions because exclusivity was alien to them. There were, however, limits of tolerance. These limits were reached when public citizens abandoned their ancestral religion or refused to participate in the common civic cults. Even as early as the time of Livy (59 bce–17 ce), he could report with indignation that in the crisis of the Second Punic War (218–210) "not only in secret and within the walls of private houses Roman rites were abandoned, but in public places also, and in the Forum and on the Capitoline, there was a crowd of women who were following the custom of the fathers neither in their sacrifices nor in prayers of the gods" (Livy, History of Rome, 25.1.7). With the Christian mission, abandonment of the mos maiorum (the ancestral custom) became much more frequent. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul advised the Gentile Christians not to participate in pagan temple meals (1 Cor. 8:10–12, 10:19ff.). The Christian apologists sustained this rejection of pagan cults.

The pagan reproaches addressed to Christians diverged from East to West. In the Greek East, the Christians were accused of godlessness (atheotes). The accusation is attested for the first time by Justin Martyr in 1 Apology 6.1 (written between 150–155 ce) and in the Martyrdom of Polycarp 3 (shortly after 156 ce). In the Latin West, the Christians were accused of "abandoning the religion of their ancestors" (christiani qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam). In his edict of tolerance (311 ce), Galerius gave this abandonment as reason for the persecution. Christians should be forced to acknowledge the ancestral religion, he argued (Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 34). The reproach of having left the mos Romanorum ("way of the Romans") had already been uttered earlier in the acts of Scillitan martyrs.

In general, the pagan cults did not expel members who adhered to rival cults or philosophical circles. But often the gods of pagan cults were officially recognized by the civic authorities and ranked, in Rome, for example, with the di publici populi Romani (the public gods of the Roman nation). Every citizen had the duty to respect these civic gods. The Christians refusing to do so were not only suspected of superstitio, but also of political disloyalty. The first important critic of ancient Christianity, the Middle Platonic philosopher Celsus, accused the Christians of insurrection (stasis) against the community (Origen, Against Celsus 3.5). One hundred years later, about 270 ce, Porphyry renewed this criticism. The Christians are atheists, he wrote, "because they abandoned the ancestral gods, on which the existence of every nation and every city is based" (transmitted by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica 1.2.2). Other pagan critics called for action. In the writings of Dio Cassius, Maecenas says to Augustus: "Venerate the Divine everywhere and totally according to the ancestral customs and compel the others to do the same" (Roman History, 52.36). The general persecutions of Christians since Decius (r. 249–251 ce) met the demands of such a program. The same holds true for the edict of Diocletian against the Manichaeans (297 ce). It states: "It is the most serious crime to reject what once for all has been arranged and established by the ancestors" (Mosaicarum et Romanorum legum collatio 15.3.2f.). In sum, apostasy only became a problem for pagan society when its ancestral customs were rejected. The limits of tolerance were mainly political ones.

Apostasy in the Christian Church

Christianity found its adherents among Jews and pagans. But these new Christians did not always resolutely abandon their old religious loyalties. Until the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 ce) there were Christians who followed Jewish ritual law painstakingly (e.g., Gal. 2:11–14). Other Christians continued to participate in pagan temple meals (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:10). Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, addressed their risk of falling away (1 Cor. 10:20–21), but did not regard this practice as apostasy per se (Oropeza, 2002, p. 223). Only when the church had separated itself from Jewish-Christians and Gnostics did this evaluation change. Apostasy then became a clear-cut issue. The Neoplatonic philosopher Ammonius Saccas is said to have been a Christian who apostatized (Eusebius, Church History 6.19.9f.). The most noted apostate to paganism was the emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363 ce). Committed to Neoplatonism, he thwarted the church's aims by every means in his power, short of actual persecution, and resumed the reproach directed against Christians for despising ancestral beliefs. Furthermore, he sustained pagan temples and attempted to reform them.

The notion of an apocalyptic desertion migrated from Jewish beliefs into the writings of the early Christian authors. In his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul maintains that the coming of the Lord cannot take place "if not at first comes the apostasy and reveals himself the man of lawlessness the son of perdition" (2 Thes. 2:3). The synoptic apocalypse in the Gospel of Mark expects that at the end of time many will be lead astray and betray each other (Mk. 13:5–12). But the early Christian conception of an apocalyptic apostasy differed from the above-mentioned Jewish one. Early Christians were less anxious about apostasy to foreign religions than the Jews of the Maccabean era had been. They were far more anxious about teachers of a false doctrine. The First Letter to Timothy explicitly states that the apostasy at the end of time is due to Gnostic heretics. And the First Letter of John points out that the last hour has come because false prophets and teachers have arisen from the community, fulfilling the prophecy of the coming of the antichrist. Interesting parallels can be detected in some Jewish literature which appeared contemporaneously with these Christian texts. Passages originating from Qumran speak about the teacher of lies who has not obeyed the teacher of justice. At the ascension of Isaiah, one passage asserts, all men in this world will believe in Belial, the antichrist.

From the third century on, the term apostasy referred exclusively to apostasy to paganism. Cyprian used the term to describe Christians who had returned to paganism in the time of the persecution by Decius, a move Cyprian equated with heresy (Epistula 57.3). In the ancient church the corresponding notion to apostasy became perseverance. Genuine faith was endangered by three kinds of threat: sedition and vices; heresy; and persecution. Originally, however, apostasy had been conceived as an internal fission of the community due to false prophets and teachers. Here the Jewish and Christian views of apostasy diverge. The apostate abandoning Christian belief is not an ally of the external enemy, but the follower of an internal adversary. For this reason, the law of the early church in regard to apostasy was severe. Apostasy was an inexpiable offense. After baptism there could be no forgiveness of this sin.

Only long after the persecution of Decius was readmission of the lapsi ("the fallen") allowed (Cyprian, Epistula 57). After the conversion of Constantine (d. 337), apostasy became a civil offense punishable by law. Edicts in the Theodosian Code, composed in 438 ce, testify to this severity. "Those Christians who have become pagans shall be deprived of the power and right to make testaments and every testament of such decedent … shall be rescinded by the annulment of its foundation" (381 ce CTh 16, 7,1). It is important to note that an edict of 383 ce explicitly mentions Manichaeism in the same context as pagan temples and Jewish rites. Christians simply carried on the persecution of Manichaeans started by Diocletian in 297 ce. The Manichaean teachers were to be punished, the attendants of their assemblies to become infamous, and their houses and habitations in which the doctrine was taught to be expropriated by the fiscal agents of the government. Two edicts promulgated in 391 ce directed that all persons having betrayed the holy faith shall be segregated from the community of all men, shall not have testamentary capacity, shall not inherit, shall forfeit their position and status, and shall be branded with perpetual infamy (CTh 16,7,4). The Code of Justinian (534 ce) treated the apostate as a criminal (CJ 1, 7). Due to the fact that the code became a major source for later canonical law and the Western legal tradition, the law remained effective until citizenship and religious affiliation were separated by the constitutions of modern states.

Under modern political conditions the phenomenon of apostasy did not vanish, but changed profoundly. In the latter half of the twentieth century, religious communities arose in the United States that challenged the value of family relations and private property and replaced them by a utopian communal order. In some cases, external opposition to such groups was vehement. Concerned relatives mobilized media, politicians, and law-enforcement officials against the evil of these "cults." Apostates of the disputed communities joined with opponents to become principal witnesses for the allegation that only by mental coercion ("brainwashing") had they joined such groups. These apostates fulfilled a crucial role in the violence that exploded in the cases of Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 and of the Branch Davidians, a sect of the Seventh-day Adventists, in the Texas town of Waco in 1993 (Bromley, 1998, pp. 9–10).

Apostasy in the Islamic Community

The Arabic word murtadd denotes the apostate, and the terms irtidad or riddah denote apostasy. Qurʾanic texts referring to apostasy threaten the apostate with punishment in the other world. The "wrath of God" will fall upon him, "except he has been forced, while his heart has been found in the belief" (sūrah 16:106). A similar idea is put forward by sūrah 3:82–89: those who apostatize are the true evildoers. Their reward will be the curse of God, angels, and men. They will be condemned to hell "except those who afterward return and mend their ways. God is compassionate and ready to forgive" (sūrah 3:89). These early Islamic texts are less severe than the canonical and Imperial laws and the later Islamic ones.

There are also in Islam some scarce references to an apocalyptic apostasy. Occasionally the apocalyptic scenarios concerning the rise of the mahdī, or Islamic Messiah, provide for an antichrist called al-dajjāl. This word, not found in the Qurʾān, is borrowed from the Aramaic language. The Syriac version uses daggala to translate the pseudochristoi of Matthew 24:24. Al-dajjal, who will rule for a limited period, shall lead the crowds astray.

Later Islamic jurisprudence elaborated on the meaning of apostasy. As Yohanan Friedmann shows, it covered not just a retraction of the confession of faith, but also vilifying the Prophet, impugning the honor of his mother, denying the Qurʾān or parts of it, rejecting manifest commandments as the five pillars, and making licit well-known prohibitions (2003, pp. 121–159). If these transgressions are due to a person's ignorance, the person should be apprised. If the person persists, he or she becomes an unbeliever. Their legal status is different from those who had never joined Islam. The apostate lacks "religion" and is not entitled to participate in such religious actions as marriage or slaughtering for food. While in the Qurʾān apostasy was punished in the hereafter, later the sanction was transferred into this world. Mālik ibn Anas (d. 796), founder of the Mālikī school, transmitted the following as a sentence of the Prophet: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him." But there was dissent among the ʿulamāʾ over the particulars: was it applicable to women as well as men, and to Muslim by conversion as well as by birth? There was further debate regarding whether in each case an effort should be made to bring the apostate to repentance before execution. Mālik ibn Anas held the view that such efforts should be restricted only to those who bluntly abandoned Islam. Those who turned tacitly to zindiq s ("heretics") should be killed immediately. Efforts to bring them to repentance are useless, for the sincerity of their repentance cannot be recognized because they have been infidels in secret before, while they confessed in public to be followers of Islam. The reference to zindiqs is instructive. The Middle Persian term zandik, from which the Arabic zindiq is derived, derives in turn from Zand (the commentary of the Avesta text) and refers to Manichaean and Mazdean heresy. As early as the reign of Bahram II (276–293 ce), the chief of the Zoroastrian clergy, Kardēr, had ordered followers to persecute Christians and zindiq s. In the same way as Christians adhered to the laws taken by pagan emperors against the Manichaeans, so the Islamic conquerors carried on the pre-Islamic persecutions of the zindiq s. The prototype of the apostate was the heretic. The numerous persecutions of members of the Bahā˒ī religion in Iran since 1852 testify to the severity of this Islamic law. The apostates must be killed, their property confiscated, and their marriages annulled.

Islamic apostasy did not vanish in contemporary times. Since apostasy was defined so broadly, it covered many forms of blasphemy. A Muslim could even become an apostate unintentionally, as was the case with author Salman Rushdie. In his 1988 English-language novel The Satanic Verses, he used vulgar terminology in passages about Muḥammad and his wives. The title of his novel was actually a reference to a tradition which held that some verses of the Qurʾān may have been inspired by Satan (sūrah 22:52; 53, 19–22). This reference seemed to cast doubt on the belief that the entire Qurʾān was the verbal utterance of God. Though Rushdie's novel was written for a post-Christian Western audience, it stirred tremendous wrath among Muslims worldwide. South Africa, India, and Pakistan banned the book's sale in their countries due to their substantial Muslim populations, but in Great Britain it was sold freely. Though British Muslims demanded: "Freedom of speech, yes! Freedom to insult no!," the British authorities declined to apply a blasphemy statute against the book. The most dire consequence came in early 1989, when Iran's leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Rushdie. Khomeini declared to the world's Muslim population that The Satanic Verses was against Islam, the Prophet, and the Qurʾān, and sentenced Rushdie to death. The fatwa also included any publishers of editions of the book who were aware of its content. Khomeini called upon zealous Muslims to execute them quickly (Ruthven, 1990, p. 112). Though Khomeini went with this ruling far beyond the competence of an Islamic cleric, it took years before the fatwa was retracted in 2001 by Iran's president. Another well-known case concerns the Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abū Zayd. Since Abū Zayd reportedly refuted the Qurʾān as the word of God, he was declared an apostate and forcibly divorced from his wife (Dupret, 2003, pp. 137–138).

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