Brian Trafford

I suspect that the key phrase here is "must, by necessity, have been a participant...", since it is obvious that no such necessity is present. Any number of possibilities present themselves as to why the author of Acts would have chosen to use the first person plural in these parts of his story.

As for there being tension in Acts 27 between first and third person plural accounts, this is a simple matter to address. The author of Acts does not include the crew in his "we" group, and therefore whenever the crew is acting, he uses third person, but when his own group is acting, he goes back to first person. Far from being difficult to sustain the personal aspects of the narration, the story is told in a logically consistent manner with two groups being present on the voyage, the "we" group, and the crew.

In any case, the question is not one of historicity, but whether or not the author of Acts really was present during portions of his story, and here I think that Robbins simply does not care (as it is not relavent to his overall thesis). Again, the fact that he was willing to engage in a test to determine if John Mark was the source for the stories indicates that he remained open, at least hypothetically, to the possibility.
Well, Josephus certainly counts as an eye witness account, as do Caesar's _Gallic Wars_, as well as _The Voyage of Hanno_, and _Third Syrian War_.
While I agree that this is what Robbins is trying to propose, his examples are poorly chosen, and his conclusions are too sweeping. From my own recollection of the discussion his thesis hinged on the amount of detail one finds in a story to know if it is a part of the convention, but this argument fails when we compare stories like those of Acts 13-14 (which is entirely in third person), and Acts 16 (where it is in first person) where the amount of narrative detail is essentially the same. He does point to the example of greater detail as found in Acts 27-28, but this is the only case where we see significantly more detail in the report than is found in the other first person (and third person) stories found in Acts. If his argument was that Acts 27-28 followed a convention, then perhaps his argument would have more force, but as I said previously, he will have to tighten up his arguments overall in order to give them greater explanitory force.
While I agree with your last statement, I must admit that I found discussions with Robbins on X-Talk to be rather frustrating, as it seemed that he consistently missed opportunities to explain himself better, and to address the legitimate questions of the other members. That is, after all, how scholarly discussions take place, and even if everyone is not convinced, at least one leaves with the impression that the major points were addressed by the advocate of a new methodological approach.
Well, if Irenaeas is used as evidence of how this narrative was viewed in the mid-2nd Century (he was, after all, writing c. 180 CE), then it appears that they did accept it as an historical account. That said, I do not see that this means that it was necessarily historical.

Peace,

Brian Trafford

Toto

But your only evidence of "eye witnessing" in The Voyage of Hanno, at least, is the use of the first person.

Robbins always qualified his "conclusions" as "suggestions". It was just the sweep of his prose that carried you along to the conclusion he wanted to you reach.

Besides, I don't recall that the amount of detail in the story was central to his thesis on the use of "we". It was more a question of the place of the voyage in the entire narrative.

I got the impression he did not want to become infected with all that "negative energy" from people who did not seem to want to understand what he was saying. Robbins' position in the scholarly world is, after all, secure.

The usual dating for Acts is 110-150 CE. That's at least a generation before Irenaeus had to fish around for a way of proving a connection to the original apostles by showing that the anonymous 3rd gospel was written by someone who knew Paul.

Brian Trafford

The "usual" dating ranges offered for Acts range from lows of mid-60's (typically held by Christian evangelical scholars) to a high of c. 120 or so, with a vast majority of scholars holding the 90-100 CE range. This seems most probable to me. In any case, this is hardly the focus of the discussion in this thread, so we can set it aside.

As for your second point, Irenaeus is not "hunting around" for a connection between the author of Acts and Paul. The document itself makes the claim that the author accompanied Paul on some his journeys. This is, as they say, prima facie evidence.

Peace,

Brian Trafford

Toto

Okay, the usual non-evangelical dating, which seems to accept 110 as a best guess, but goes up to 150 CE (Knox). But the earlier you push Acts, the greater the time period between that and Irenaeus' connecting it to Luke.

The document itself does not make the explicit claim that the author accompanied Paul, unless you are going to read that into the simple use of the second person plural - which is assuming what you want to prove, and which hardly rises to the level of "prima facie" evidence. Is the use of first person narration in the Odyssey prima facie evidence of its truth?

Luke 1 starts with:

Acts 1 with

There is no reason to connect the "I" of these introductions with "those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." In fact, they seem to be separate.

Brian Trafford

This one is pretty straight forward. If a person is relating a story in which they start using the words "we" and "us" it is generally accepted that the person is speaking of a personal experience in which they were one of participants.

As for the claim that Luke wrote either Luke or Acts, I have not made this claim, though I consider it to be both plausible and probable. In any case, my arguments do not rest upon this being the case, so it is a side issue.

The question that remains relevant here is whether or not Robbins has demonstrate that the author of Acts made use of a literary convention when he composed ther "we passages" in his work. Kirby's essay argues powerfully that no such convention existed at the time Acts was composed, while my own reading of Robbins tells me that even if such a convention did exist, the author of Acts did not use it consistently, and it begs the question as to why he did not use it consistently. Moreover, in Acts 13-14 he does not use it at all when the opportunity to employ this presumed convention would seem to be opportune. Robbins never explains why this convention was not followed, nor does he define it with sufficient clarity to identify when this convention is being employed. After all, the examples from Acts itself are not consistent enough in their employment of the convention to lend themselves to this kind of analysis. From this it seems reasonable to conclude that Robbins' argument lacks force, and offers little useful methodology in the study of Acts itself. To become useful it will need to be tightened up, and perhaps he will do this, if and when he responds to Kirby's critique.

Peace,

Brian Trafford

Peter Kirby

Brian, I'm sure that Robbins will have something to say about my essay when I get it finished and show it to him.

best,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

I think his response will be found to be "frustrating" precisely because, as Toto stated earlier, Kirby does not engage him on his own terms. Kirby grabs the thesis, uses a manner of evaluation that applies common sense and straightforward logic, tests the "hypothesis" using all manner of texts and situations and concludes that "there is no precedent" of use of such a literary device in ancient sea voyage stories.

Much as Kirbys essay is not masked with negative energy, he (Kirby) brings on board his own rules. His own premises. And somewhat different, and more demanding standards. This sets up a situation that will foster "talking past each other". Indeed, one may resort to stating that Robins' case is one of special pleading because it is not intended to be applied indiscriminately accross texts narrating ancient sea travels. One has to transvalue Robins argument without a mulish appeal to conventional modes of argument and falsification methods.

One that attempts to subject his thesis, with its complex nature, to simple rules of logic, can suffer the fate of being labelled tone-deaf and "missing the point". I can even add that its simplistic to hold the argument to simple and straightforward rules because (among other reasons):

(a) even it it was indeed a convention, an author can choose to use it or leave it. This has the result of making the "appearance" of such convention in texts arbitrary. So its naive to expect a consistent use - for such a style to qualify as a convention [and I am not saying this is what Kirby expects]

(b) a sea voyage is not necessarily localized to the sea - the sailors stopped at ports, cities, islands etc before continuing. And the end of the voyage - where the parties set on land is still part of the journey. Actions at certain points on land were very important aspects of sea voyages.

His is a survey of the "socio-rhetorical dynamics of the early christian sea voyages". It's an exposition into the style of discourse ancient writers employed. He considers questions of historicity ("we" being indicative of eyewitness account) to be exclusionary and regards them as blinding the readers from appreciating "good literature".

Underpinning his thesis is the idea that social situations influence the manner of peoples discourse and since the authors of the texts surveyed were likely to be members of sea faring communities in the mediterranean, we encounter this (socio-rhetoric) influence in the form of "we" passages in the narratives. And the intrusive nature of the first person singular in narratives (from third person narration and first person plural) can be interpreted as pointers of authors seeking to adopt to certain conventions.

Robin stated : As Robin stated (in response to Layman), :That can be interpreted as a form of philosophical rejection of two-valued logic that most people employ in trying to determine the (objective) truth [I think that by implication, the truth, per Robin, is relational and not isolated/exclusionary].

I am also curious as to what would qualify as a "precedent" according to Kirby.

A question to everyone here - can social situations affect the manner of discourse of communities?
Its my belief that the answer to that question is the first step in understanding Robins thesis.

Toto

My Episcopalian friend keeps telling me that atheists just don't get religion because they don't want to use the right side of their brains. I think that Robbins has written a very right-brained impressionistic essay. His critics have attacked it in a left-brained fashion. When I read the essay and just go along with the flow, I think, yes, there's something here. There is nothing approaching hard proof, but why does there need to be? It’s just LitCrit, not forensic history.

Robbins' thesis has the advantage of explaining the "great omission" in Luke, and throws insight on the overall structure of Acts. It provides an explanation for the shift from third person to first person plural narration without being required to assume that Luke was either obscure or a very sloppy editor. The alternative explanations all have their own problems, and would probably fail if subjected to an inquiry of the same rigor.

My own take is that Luke’s original audience recognized Acts as a novel, and had no expectation of any part of it being based on personal experience. The use of "we" would have been read as an allusion to a sea adventure story, but not as an indication of reality – although I don’t know if the audience would have assumed that a fictional character lay behind the "we" or not, or if they even thought about the issue. Certainly, if the audience had assumed that "we" was spoken by a fictional character, it seems very strange that this character never identifies himself or herself.

This anomaly of the anonymous "we" is even greater if one assumes that Acts was regarded as a sort of history. For a narrator to never identify himself deprives the history of the testimonial value that first person narration should provide.

Richard Pervo, in Profit with Delight, at page 57, has this to say on the controversy, although his conclusions do seem very sweeping:

{most footnotes omitted}

Tharmas

Thanks Toto for putting Robbins’ essay in perspective.

Here’s a comparison that occurred to me the other day. Take it for what it’s worth.

A few years ago a history buff named Jimmy Driftwood set an episode from American history to music. Those of you over forty may remember “The Battle of New Orleans”. The rest of you can check out the lyrics here:

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/battleof.htm

Notice that Driftwood dramatizes the episode by selecting an anonymous first person plural narrative voice.

Notice that this is a completely natural choice.

I doubt if any of Driftwood’s listeners ever wondered who the “we” of the lyrics really referred to. I doubt if anyone thought that Driftwood was actually claiming to be a veteran of the campaign of 1814.

Like I said, take it for what it’s worth.