Beginning with God: Theology and Origins in Nonnus

Abstract:This article considers how stories of origin change under the growing influence of Christianity in late antiquity. The analysis starts from the different claims on origin made in the four canonical Gospels, on the one hand, and the developed theory of origin in Augustine's Confessions, on the other, where the question of "where do I come from?" is entwined with reflections on the history of the soul, the nature of time, the functioning of memory, and an exegesis of the multiform interpretations of the book of Genesis, the foundational story of origin for the religious tradition which he is helping to create. This recognition of the extensive discourse of origins taking shape in late antiquity provides a frame for the central analysis of Nonnus's Dionysiaca and its extraordinary stories of the origin of Beroe (Beirut), where stories of beginnings multiply and swirl with a Dionysiac transformative confusion. The article explores how Nonnus contributes a specific and complex vision of the rich incoherence of the discourse of origin in late antiquity, in and against arguments about temporality based on the debates about the authority of the Nicene creed.