Post-Baptismal Chrismation in Second-Century Syria: A Reconsideration of the Evidence

Alastair Logan has argued for the existence of a post-baptismalanointing with ointment in parts of the ‘great church’of second-century Syria and Asia Minor. He has proposed thatthis rite fell into desuetude but found new life in the fourthcentury. Logan's arguments depend especially on Ignatius’Letter to the Ephesians 17.1, the blessing at the end of theCoptic Didache 10.7, and the version of this prayer in ApostolicConstitutions 7.27. However, Logan's evidence lacks convincingcompleteness for three reasons. First, Ignatius’ Letterto the Ephesians says too little about the anointing practisedin communities he judged orthodox to serve as a witness fora post-baptismal ointment rite in these churches. Second, Logan'sargument that the prayer at the end of the Coptic Didache 10.7refers to ointment and is an original part of this documentfails to answer sufficiently too many questions and counter-argumentsfound in the literature. Third, his argument for supposing thatApostolic Constitutions 7.27 proposes a ritual innovation consideredessential by the redactor depends on the misreading of somepassages and on the assertion of divergent interpretations ofthe baptismal ointment in this work which comparison with otherAntiochene sources shows to be unjustified.     

A test of the reward-value hypothesis

Rats retain source memory (memory for the origin of information) over a retention interval of at least 1 week, whereas their spatial working memory (radial maze locations) decays within approximately 1 day. We have argued that different forgetting functions dissociate memory systems. However, the two tasks, in our previous work, used different reward values. The source memory task used multiple pellets of a preferred food flavor (chocolate), whereas the spatial working memory task provided access to a single pellet of standard chow-flavored food at each location. Thus, according to the reward-value hypothesis, enhanced performance in the source memory task stems from enhanced encoding/memory of a preferred reward. We tested the reward-value hypothesis by using a standard 8-arm radial maze task to compare spatial working memory accuracy of rats rewarded with either multiple chocolate or chow pellets at each location using a between-subjects design. The reward-value hypothesis predicts superior accuracy for high-valued rewards. We documented equivalent spatial memory accuracy for high- and low-value rewards. Importantly, a 24-h retention interval produced equivalent spatial working memory accuracy for both flavors. These data are inconsistent with the reward-value hypothesis and suggest that reward value does not explain our earlier findings that source memory survives unusually long retention intervals.