Layman

In attempt to salvage a discussion about BC&A, I've started this thread to develop an idea expressed by some in another thread:

http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.c...&f=51&t=000848

Here, I want to explore the persuasive value of the theory that the "we-passages" in Acts are merely literary devices common in ancient times used to describe sea-voyages. To facilitate this discussion I take comments by P. Kirby and Toto and address them here.

As discussed below, this theory has been refuted by modern works of scholarship. I have yet to see a substantive and persuasive defense of these older works that addressed the problems raised. If you know of any, of course I would be glad to read them.

Kirby is right that Robbins is the moving force behind this theory. And most others have built on or responded to his arguments.

This statement is very misleading.

While it is true that the three "we-passages" in Acts include sea voyages, it is not true that "Luke was only present during sea voyages and nowhere else in Paul's ministry." All of the "we-passages" include a substantial amount of events that occur on land--before, after, and sometimes between sea-voyages. Except for Chapter 27, the sea voyages are not even important plot points or have much significance. Moreover, it is hardly remarkable that the "we-passages" include sea voyages. Because there are at least ten such voyages in Acts alone (and two ship voyages in the Gospel of Luke), it is hardly surprising that the "we-sections" would encompass some of them. Indeed, it would have been impossible for a traveling companion of Paul to avoid participating in at least some sea voyages.

As mentioned above, the "we-passages" of Acts include many events on land unrelated to sea voyages. For example, let us review the first "we-passage." The full "we passage" is noted in bold and the no-sea-voyage-text referenced at the end.

.

Accordingly, well over half of text of this "we" section is devoted exclusively to events that occurred on land, unrelated to any sea-voyage.

Similarly, the other "we passages" also discuss many events taking place on land. .

In 20:5-15/21:1-18 Luke notes that "we stayed seven days" in Troas, and discusses much of Paul's ministry during that time. (20:6-12) Acts goes on to discuss in detail to discuss in detail their stay in Caesarea, (21:8-15) as well as telling how in Jerusalem "Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present." (21:17)

In 27:1-28:16 Luke spends all of Chapter 27 on the famous "ship-wreck", but spends most of the rest of the passage in Chapter 28 discussing events on Land--Paul's ministry in Malta (28:1-10).

Accordingly, the idea that the "we-passages" are only used to record or describe sea-voyages is erroneous. Much of them are devoted to discussing events on land that are unrelated to sea-travel.

Far from having "conclusively" made his case, Mr. Robbins has been refuted on this issue time and again by modern scholarship. See, e.g, Susan M. Praeder, "The Problem of First Person Narration in Acts." NovT 29, 193-218 (1987); Joseph Fitzymer, Luke the Theologian, at 16-23; John B. Polhill, Acts, at 346; Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts, at 317-19, Colin Hemer, First Person Narrative in Acts 27-28, TB 36, at 70-109 (1985); Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, at 483-84; C. K. Barrett, "Paul Shipwrecked," in Scripture: Meaning and Method, at 55. As Witherington puts it, "It can now be said with a high degree of certainty that there was no convention in antiquity for sea voyages to be recorded in the first person." Witherington, at 483-84.

First, some of the works pointed to as "examples" of this convention -- such as A. Tacitus' Clitophon and Leucippe -- fail because they are written from the first person perspective throughout. Acts is not. Acts is generally a third-person work with some first-person sections.

Second, there are more examples of third-person sea voyage accounts -- such as Seneca's Agamemnon -- from that period than there are first-person accounts. And this includes those writings, discussed above, that are completely written in the first person or are of actual sea voyages. This indicates that no convention for the use of the first-person for sea voyages existed.

Third, Robbins simply misreads, misunderstands, or mischaracterizes those texts were there appears to be a shift form the third-person on land to the first-person at sea. See Praeder, "The Problem," at 211-12; Hemer, Acts of the Apostles, at 317-318.

The Third Syrian War. Robbins relies on a fragmentary report about the Third Syrian War as an example of such a shift. However, as Praeder and others demonstrate, the shift here is an actual one. The author shifts from discussing events in which he participated to events which he did not. Praeder, at 211-12. "In the Syrian War text the shift from third to first person is a sign of authorial participation after the recording of events in which the author didn't participate." Witherington, at 483. The first person is used to describe what the Author's side (the Ptolemies) are doing as opposed to what the enemy (Seleucids) are doing. Significantly, the Ptolemies were attacking by sea while the Seleucids were land bound in this section, thus explaining the distinction between first and third persons.

Voyage of Hanno. Similarly, Robbins use of the Voyage of Hanno as an example is flawed. As Colin Hemer noted, "the two opening sentences are in the third person, and the remainder of the document in the first plural. But the opening is a formal heading which gives the explorer's commissioning, and it should be printed as a prefatory paragraph, as it is by its editor, and not as part of a continuous undifferentiated narrative, as it is in Robbins' rendering." Hemer, The Book of Acts, as 318. As Witherington notes, "the shift occurs not because of the beginning of the sea voyage report but because the introduction is over." Witherington, at 483.

Antiochene Acts of Ignatius. While there is shift in the currently surviving text, it is probably due to the fact that the surviving text is a composite one and written very late. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part 2, Vol. 2, at 477-95. Moreover, the "we" begins in the middle of a sea-voyage that has already been undertaken and extends far beyond the sea voyage. Hemer, The Book of Acts, at 318.

Fourth, as discussed above in detail, the "we-passages" are not restricted to sea-voyages. A substantial amount of them takes place on land.

Fifth, most times the ancient authors used the first person for sea voyages to assert that the author (or the author's source) was actually present during the voyage.

"In fact, the occurrence of the first person plural in such narrative means, in almost very case, that the writer was claiming to be present--and that not only on the sea. Just as the 'we' of Acts is not confined to the water so neither is it in, for example, the voyage of Hanno. Of course, any of the authors concerned may be lying.... And he may perhaps quote someone else's first person narrative, though I do not find that this happened. There is therefore...a fair measure of probability in what may seem an old-fashioned, and was to me an unexpected, conclusion, namely that the narrative of Acts 27 was written by one who actually made the voyage." C. K. Barrett, "Paul Shipwrecked," in Scripture: Meaning and Method, at 55.

Hemer explains it this way: "Nothing said here disposes of the fact that voyage-narratives are often couched in the 'we-form', but this is a natural tendency dictated by the situation. Such accounts are indeed often in the first person, because they recall personal experience, and plural because they recall communal experience. That tendency is as true of colloquial English as of literary Greek (or Latin), but it is no proof of the existence of a literary style appropriate to what was not personal experience." Hemer, at 319.

Sixth, although there are at least ten sea voyages (and two voyages by ship in the Gospel of Luke), we first-person "we" only occurs in three of them. The first person is not used for the following sea voyages in Acts:

13:4-5 (sea voyage from Antioch to Cyprus)

13:13 (sea voyage from Paphos to Perga)

14:20-28 (sea voyage from Attalia to Antioch)

14:38-40 (sea voyage from Antioch to Cyprus)

17:14 (sea voyage from Thessalonica to Athens)

18:18-23 (sea voyages from Syria to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Ceasarea)

20:1-2 (sea voyage to Macedonia)

As Fitzymer points out, the use of the "we-passage" in some sea-voyages but the failure to use them in other passages which would be "candidates" for such a literary device defeats any claim that a literary convention is at work here. The first person appears and disappears in an almost arbitrary manner, inexplicable except by whim or access to an eye-witness sources (Fitzymer concludes it's the author's own). Fitzymer, Luke the Theologian, at 1-26.

Accordingly, Robbins theory fails to explain the "we-passages". There simply was no literary convention in Luke's time to cast sea-voyages in the first-person.

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]

Peter Kirby

Thanks for a good start on this discussion. I have ordered Talbert's Perspectives so that I might be able to read about this subject for myself. Who has made the best reply to Robbins on this point?

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

I'd just like to point out that the quotes attributed to me are not my words or necessarily my point of view, but quoted from Paul N Tobin's web site. I quoted him only to show the origin of the argument. I have not looked into them sufficiently yet, but a casual web search shows that Robert Price and Burton Mack cite Robbins as an authority.

Layman says that Robbins has been refuted by "modern works of scholarship", but Robbins is quite modern himself, (if not postmodern) and has not backed down from his thesis. (See this essay.) He apparently regards himself as practicing "Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation." I am leary of wading through a lot of postmodern jargon, but I will look around for a copy of Talbert.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, Layman.

{edited to fix URL - again!}

Vorkosigan

Good topic choice, Layman. Merry Christmas to you! I'll see what I can dig up from this.

I should add that your opening post is excellent and very convincing.

Vorkosigan

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

Artemus

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Layman:
[QB] Antiochene Acts of Ignatius. While there is shift in the currently surviving text, it is probably due to the fact that the surviving text is a composite one and written very late.
[\QB][\QUOTE]

Could the same argument (that it is a composite) be applied to Acts itself? In the other thread someone referred to the "final redactor of Acts".

Sauron

There are two basic points here to Layman's response, if I understand it correctly:

1. The usage of "we" as a definitive indicator of a tale of sea voayage is not consistent with the usage of "we" in other works contemporary with Acts ; and

2. The usage of "we" as a definitive indicator of a tale of sea vouage is not consistent with the usage of "we" in other places in the book of Acts itself.

Of these two, I find #2 to be the stronger argument against the affirmative position.

Since I haven't read the affirmative position for this argument yet, does anyone know how the affirmative case explains away the lack of consistent usage in Acts? That would seem to be the first necessary step, before proposing such a hypothesis.

Vorkosigan

2. The usage of "we" as a definitive indicator of a tale of sea vouage is not consistent with the usage of "we" in other places in the book of Acts itself.

I also found this the most devastating point. I'd sure like to see Robbins' explanation. Hope you can find the original, Peter or Toto.

Tharmas

Thanks for the interesting holiday reading, Layman, and Merry Christmas to all!

I’ve been reviewing the comments about Acts in R.L Fox’s The Unauthorized Version (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992). He takes the common sense approach that, despite several critical arguments to the contrary, the text itself invites us to accept that its author uses the first person when he has direct personal knowledge of the events described. Against that simple explanation all other explanations must seem somewhat contrived.

He brings up an additional point that I had forgotten, and that is that there are two accepted versions of Acts. The less-well-known version, from the Codex Bezae (“Western text”) is some ten percent longer. Fox argues that contemporary scholarship (he writes this ten years ago) accepts much of the added material as genuine. More important to the discussion at hand is the fact that the added material includes “we” passages, including a “we” added at Acts 11:28 indicating that the author was present with Paul very early in his mission, “before the first missionary journey began.”

So, I wonder if Robbins addresses the alternate version of Acts.

Toto, your link to the Robbins article is down, although it worked when I checked it out yesterday. And I must say, although used absolutely correctly in that context, he does get the prize for using the word “hermeneutics” more times per page than anyone else I’ve ever seen!

Yuri Kuchinsky

Greetings, all!

I just wonder, Why would the "we passages" in Acts be any more reliable than any other passages in Acts?

For example, what about this story of Paul being bitten by a viper, and suffering no harm (Acts 28:3-6)?

And what about all those cures that he was supposed to have performed? Is this all supposed to be seen as factual reporting?

(Acts 28:7) "Now in the neighborhood of
that place were lands belonging to the chief
man of the island, named Publius, who
received us and entertained us hospitably for
three days. 8 It happened that the father of
Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery; and
Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his
hands on him healed him. 9 And when this
had taken place, the rest of the people on the
island who had diseases also came and were
cured."

IMHO, the whole thing is a typical piece of Christian propaganda, that was probably written nearly a hundred years after Paul was dead. Sure, there seem to be some prior sources embedded in the Book of Acts here and there, but the "we passages" don't seem to belong to this category.

All the best,

and Happy New Year!

Yuri.

Toto

vBB can do some strange things to links that were imported from uBB. I fixed the link again.

I may be getting a copy of Robbins essay next week or so. Let me point out again that I was just posting the source of the idea, not endorsing it. I will be interested to see how the argument goes, but I doubt that anyone is going to change their opinion on the historical value of Acts based on how its use of personal pronouns compares to other literature of the era.