This dissertation coordinates two problems which have hitherto resisted adequate synthesis: the form-critical problem of describing proverbial-sounding Synoptic sayings and the tradition-historical problem of assessing the rhetorical habits of Jesus and his immediate successors in oral tradition. The approach taken here to linking these qualifies not only form-critical assumptions of continuity between written forms - in Kleinliteratur - and identifies oral Sitze im Leben of mnemotechnical scholasticism, but also of the recent emphases on radical discontinuity between oral and writing modes of tradition. The connection proposed here between re-description of so- called Wisdom-sayings and oral traditional aspects of the gospels is in the Hellen educational category of gnome. Defined, exemplified and prescribed in basic Graeco-Roman educational texts as well as in technical, philosophical manuals of Rhetoric and in a rich collection-literature, gnome is superbly attested as an exercise in primary education, in all kinds of public-speaking and in cross-cultural (including Jewish) tradition. Moreover, Hellenistic cultivation of gnome primarily as a speech-type, indeed as a conversational means of argumentation in any Sitz im Leben, and only secondarily though still extensively as a literary technique makes it a particularly pertinent term of comparison for New Testament criticism. Recognizing gnomic continuity between oral and written Synoptic tradition allows discussion of the authenticity not only of individual sayings (on criteria of dissimilarity), but also collectively of the gnomic manner (on criteria of oral-literate continuity and multiple attestation): quite apart from the (in)authenticity of each gnome, gnomic style is central to Jesus' self-expression and earliest tradition. In this sense gnomai are a particularly valuable data-set for reassessing the critically controverted relationship between Jesus' rhetoric and law: in Synoptic tradition gnome is exploited suggestively as a non-legal means of addressing conventionally legal topics.

Slightly revised version of her dissertation (Ph. D.), Universität-Bremen, 1999--Cf. p. (7). / Anhang presents the aphorisms chiefly discussed, those by Jean Paul, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-115).

Maxims, proverbs, and other forms of pithy sayings are sprinkled throughout ancient and medieval literature; polysemous and manipulable by nature, they serve as communicative tools whose precise meaning and function shifts from context to context. My dissertation explores how late antique and medieval Christians capitalized on the flexible forms of Greek and Latin aphorisms to negotiate and construct what it meant to be a Christian. Using theories and methods developed in the fields of folklore, linguistic anthropology, and ethno- and sociolinguistics, I investigate three examples in which Christians revised and reused wisdom in new contexts. First, I document the proverbial concept of gathering something useful from somewhere dangerous as expressed in sayings like “to pluck a rose from among thorns” and “to gather gold from shit,” charting how it originally went viral in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, remained in vogue well into the Middle Ages, and continued to evolve in meaning throughout its usage. I then analyze the Sentences of Sextus, a second-century collection of Greek maxims assembled from various Pythagorean aphorisms and sayings of Jesus. Whereas previous scholarship has focused on the authorship, content, and structure of the Sentences, I study the new meanings, functions, and forms the collection acquired as it underwent processes of translation, transcription, epitomization, excerption, and quotation. The text’s gnomic format and armchair morality contributed not only to its centuried popularity and widespread readership, but also to the dispersion of many of its individual sayings. In particular, I consider the extensive and unstudied reception of the Sentences of Sextus within the mid-ninth-century legal forgeries known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. I show that the Sextine elements reveal the presence of recurring textual units across the Decretals and offer new insights regarding Pseudo-Isidore’s compositional method—a method that, in many ways, parallels the Sentences’ recycling of Pythagorean and biblical material. Ultimately, my project models how wisdom-centered investigations of late antique and medieval literature lead to new understandings of the craftsmanship of individual authors as well as to deeper understandings of the time and its culture.