Vorkosigan

Chinese New Year and I have several hours just to play here at Infidels. A rare treat!


http://spindleworks.com/library/rfaber/aratus.htm

is a detailed discussion of Paul's use of the poet Aratus in Acts 17:28. You can add that to the pile including Josephus, Euripedes, etc.

Vorosgan

Toto

Gong Hsi Fa Tsai!

Happy New Year for the year of the goat, ram, or sheep (one web page said it was the year of the "black sheep.")

Back to topic:

Of course, literary allusions merely show that the author of Luke was well educated, or claiming to be. It is when plot elements show up that were copied from Hellenistic literature that you find circumstantial evidence that the whole thing may be a literary convention.

In Exploring the nature of Texts there is this example:

referencing

Conzelmann, Hans (1987) The Acts of the Apostles, Trans. J. Limburg, A. T. Kraabel, D. H. Juel. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Johnson, Luke Timothy (1992) The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina 5. Collegeville, MN: Liturgican Press.

Wordelman, Amy L (1994) 'The Gods Have Come Down: Images of Historical Lycaonia and the Literary Construction of Acts 14', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.

The King Lycaon incident:

Zeus went to Arcadia. There, King Lycaon and his sons slayed an infant, roasted it and gave it to Zeus to eat in order to test his power and omniscience. Zeus was infuriated by this odious crime and transformed the king and his sons into wolves. [Yuck. I hope no Hollywood network programmers are reading this.]

Other plot elements that seem to derive from Hellenic or Hellenistic literature -- which are in the middle of the "we" narratives, and give extra evidence that those narratives are not part of someone's travel log:

• Paul converts a prosperous businesswoman named "Lydia" at Philippi. But why "Lydia" when the female leaders of the church at Philippi were named Euodia and Syntyche? (Phil 4:2) In the ancient world, "Lydia" was a byword for riches, based on Lydia the homeland of King Croesus, and it was common for fable writers to assign a meaningful name to their fictional characters. Helms sees this as part of a pattern in Luke: rich women converting to Christianity.
  
• Paul’s escape from prison in Philippi after an earthquake is a "traditional Dionysiac miracle" based on Euripides’ The Bacchae.
  
• The story of Eutychus in Acts 20:7-12, in Troas, which Dennis MacDonald has shown parallels the story of Elpenor in the Odyssey (he notes that "Both narrators shift voice from the first person (I/we) to the third at the same point in the story" at p. 11.). Eutychus means "Lucky", and Elpenor's story was a common story in the Hellenistic world, where Elpenor was known as "Elpenor the Unlucky". [MacDonald’s analysis of Eutychus’ story as being based on Homer is much more solid than his evidence for Mark being based on Homer.]

I'm sure there are more.