Networks and prosopography

In order to make these different issues manageable I need a set of theoretical tools for apprehending how everyday religious practice is framed by relationships between people, i.e.

within social structures. However, social structure is a malleable concept, encompassing various different ways of approaching human interaction. Several intellectual strands of the late 20^th century employed the concept of social networks in order to escape what they saw as overly rigid structural concepts of earlier thinkers.⁶³ Modern sociology followed this trend,

63 In particular in the philosophical polemic of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Prominent examples of usage in modern social theory are the actor-network theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour, and the works of Manuel Castell and of Michael Mann.

giving emphasis to the dynamical nature of social networks in how power is asserted or information spreads through inter-personal relations.

An influential sub-field is that of social network theory (SNT).⁶⁴ It provides tools for mapping large quantities of data in terms of networks of interpersonal relations, and for analysing individual authority and positions within these networks. Briefly stated, SNT defines networks as consisting of nodes (e.g. people) and ties (e.g. friendship), the total number of which forms a network structure.⁶⁵ How resources or information spread (‘flow’) is analysed in terms of this structure, i.e. the number, directionality, and strength of ties, using concepts such as density, degree, and betweenness centrality. A rough division has emerged between formal and heuristic analysis.⁶⁶ Formal analysis consists in the application of statistical tools to quantify concepts such as density and centrality, providing numerical values that can be used to evaluate the centrality of a given actor within a network, as well as to compare the structures of different networks.⁶⁷ Several studies have applied statistical analysis to historical material.⁶⁸ For the ancient world, Elizabeth A. Clark applied concepts of network density and distance to the literary sources relating to the late-fourth century Origenist controversy, arguing that the social networks of the participants were more important for the outcome than were theological niceties.⁶⁹ More immediately relevant for the present context is Giovanni Ruffini’s study of village and city elites in late antique Egypt, based on the documentary papyri from Aphrodito and Oxyrhynchus.⁷⁰ By mapping the relations between people in the documentary papyri from Kellis we gain a sense of the scale of the House 1–3

64 This field grew out of the above-mentioned strands of social theory, but also brought together various other intellectual strands, including graph theory, sociometry, anthropology, and micro-sociology. See Stephen P.

Borgatti et al., ‘Network analysis in the social sciences’, Science 323, no. 5916 (2009).

65 For basic definitions of these and other concepts, see Stanely Wasserman and Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis: methods and applications (Cambrdige; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17–21.

66 See Håkon F. Teigen and Eivind H. Seland, ‘Introduction’, in Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and beyond, ed. Håkon F. Teigen and Eivind H. Seland (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017).

67 See Wasserman and Faust, Social Network Analysis.

68 See in particular Christopher K. Ansell and John Padgett’s study of the political strategy of the Medicis.

Christopher K. Ansell and John Padgett, ‘Robust action and the rise of the Medici, 1400–1434’, American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 6 (1993).

69Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Elite networks and heresy accusations: Towards a social description of the Origenist controversy’, Semeia 56 (1992).

70 Giovanni Ruffini, Social networks in Byzantine Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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families’ network and the various contexts in which we find Manichaeans. The papyri lack consistent information on certain aspects (e.g. occupation) necessary for an attribute analysis.

Network analysis gives us tools to analyse the role of groups or individuals in terms of their position within the set of relations instead. Chapters 3 and 4 presents a prosopography of the central familial groups of the House 1–3 material and the ties between them, the results of which are integrated into an analysis of the entire network in Chapter 5.

However, there are also uncertainties involved in this approach. Prosopographic challenges make the results of statistical calculations uncertain: individuals have to be charted across several documents where identification is often made difficult by the recurrence of certain names, frequent absence of patronymics, and the lacunose state of many documents.

Furthermore, data pertaining to the Elect is sparse: their organisation cannot be analysed purely in quantitative terms. Mapping village relations provides a starting point for probing the network of the Kellis Manichaeans, but cannot tell us all we want to know about social hierarchies or Elect–Auditor relations. Other sociological tools have to be considered.

The sociology of ancient religious movements has grown vast in the last few decades, especially since the works of Wayne Meeks and others on early Christianity in the 1970s and 80s, providing a large body of models and comparative material for understanding ancient religions as social phenomena.⁷¹ Networks have become a standard part of the repertoire, and researchers often draw on network concepts – such as Mark Granovetter’s ‘strength of weak ties’ – in order to explain patterns in the sources.⁷² Catherine Hezser applied such concepts to the Rabbinic movement in antiquity, arguing the informal nature of the Rabbis’ network.⁷³ The sociologist Rodney Stark argued that the primary vehicle for the dissemination of Christianity

71 E.g. Gerd Theissen, Sociology of early Palestinian Christianity, 1st American ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978); Wayne A. Meeks, The first urban Christians: the social world of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). See also Philip A. Harland, Associations, synagogues, and congregations: claiming a place in ancient Mediterranean society (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); Richard S. Ascough, ‘What are they now saying about Christ groups and associations?’, Currents in Biblical Research 13, no. 2 (2015).

72 An argument for the importance of peripheral (‘weak’) contacts for the flow of information in a network Mark Granovetter, ‘The strength of weak ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973); Mark Granovetter, ‘The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited’, Sociological Theory 1 (1983). For surveys of such approaches, see Greg Woolf, ‘Only connect? Network analysis and religious change in the Roman World’, Hélade 2, no. 2 (2016); and Ruffini, Social networks, 14–19.

73 Catherine Hezser, The social structure of the Rabbinic movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1997).

were ties of friends and family, with conversion consisting primarily in conforming to the beliefs of one’s social peers and intimates.⁷⁴ More recently, scholars have drawn on fields such as complexity theory. Irad Malkin has examined the emergence of a shared Greek identity, and Anna Collar the spread of late antique religious movements, both using concepts such as preferential attachment and information cascades to explain cultural dissemination within ancient social networks.⁷⁵

These frameworks provide heuristic models for group dynamics. However, there is a risk of overestimating the explanatory force of network theoretical concepts. Simply recasting old arguments or hypotheses in network terms does not in itself constitute proof. There is also a stronger criticism: while social networks facilitate and affect the spread of religious ideas and practices, the latter cannot simply be reduced to ‘contents’ that flow effortlessly through networks. As Greg Woolf has pointed out, in tracing religious change we need to take account of how it in turn affect social relations, such as the ‘socialisation into new groups, apprenticeships in worship, the observance of new rules of behaviour, the acquisition of new habits.’⁷⁶ Cultural notions actively influence patterns of behaviour and affect the way religious authority and practice is shaped,⁷⁷ in turn affecting the way networks develop.⁷⁸ Network theory remains a useful tool for mapping how ‘religion’ flows through everyday social relations, but we also need to examine what characterises these relations, and how groups and individuals adapt or reproduce them for their own ends.

74 Rodney Stark, The rise of Christianity: a sociologist reconsiders history (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

75 Irad Malkin, A small Greek world: networks in the Ancient Mediterranean, Greeks overseas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 38–40; Anna Collar, Religious networks in the Roman Empire: the spread of new ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

76 Woolf, ‘Only connect?’, 54.

77 Exemplified by the emergence of ‘holy men’ in late antiquity. Peter Brown, ‘The rise and function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, The Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971); Claudia Rapp, Holy bishops in late antiquity: the nature of Christian leadership in an age of transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

78 Interaction does for instance not only lead to dissemination or homogenisation, but can reinforce or even solidify group boundaries. See Fredrik Barth, ‘Ethnic groups and boundaries’, in Ethnic groups and boundaries.

The social organization of culture difference, ed. Fredrik Barth (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969). For a strong critique of this aspect of network theory, see Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin, ‘Network analysis, culture, and the problem of agency’, American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 6 (1994). See also Woolf, ‘Only connect?’.

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