Bede

Well, I've always had my suspicions but now I think Kirby should come clean and admit he is really a follower of Jerry Falwell.

B

Toto

Hi Peter, I assume you want some vigorous debate if you are going to think about publishing this. So please take this in that spirit.

Okay, you can limit your topic however much you wish.

I think that this is imposing too much on Robbins' work. I don't think that he has limited his study to documents that do not imply the speaker's presence in the events, or that this is a fair reading of his analysis. This is important because he notes that many accounts written from personal presence are nevertheless written in the third person (until, perhaps, they get to a sea voyage adventure.)

When you phrase the question as whether the use of the first person implies the speaker's presence, you are signing on to the anti-Robbins faction. Certainly, many of the examples are fiction, and no reasonable person would infer the presence of a real narrator from them.

That is how the document literally reads.

You notice the abrupt and unexplained shift from sentence 2 to sentence 3. How else would you characterize this? Why would you class the second sentence as part of a preface, unless you were strongly (and ideologically) motivated to deny this abrupt shift?

It is true that the document never shifts back from first person plural. And it is a very unsatisfactory example, a slender reed upon which to hang a theory, since it is a short account of a single voyage. But there is no reason to ignore what is there.

[quote]
Look again--I have provided the entire text above. In one of the "we passages" of the Antiochene Acts, it is said that "we" have "beheld these things with our own eyes." That certainly sounds like evidence of first person narrative. Lightfoot argued that the latter part of this account derived from an earlier source (itself presumably all in the first person) long before Robbins was born.[quote]

It looks to me like a fictional apologetic account, where the fictional character claims to be part of a group that has beheld things "with our own eyes". That's not evidence of a first person source, it's evidence of creative writing - which is Robbins' point. I don't think modern scholars would accept Lightfoot's interpretation as definitive.

You're right, first person. But we don't know what the scribe misunderstood, or if he misunderstood. All we know is that he wrote in the first person plural when he obviously was not at the scene.

As I recall, Robbins does not confine himself to sea voyages, but to sea adventures and similar adventurous group actions.

Yes, but if you are going to criticize someone who is writing literary criticism, it seems to miss the point to criticize him for not writing something else, expecially when you are stepping into the middle of an ideological dispute.

Robbins seems to be genuinely astonished at the intensity of the opposition to his essay. I think you need to take this intensity into account when you rely on secondary sources.

Toto

No, you are. Peter is not spewing venom in his article.

Peter Kirby

That clause in parentheses is important. Because I have not seen an example that is generally written as third person narrative "until, perhaps, they get to a sea voyage adventure." When I heard about the theory from Bob Price, I expected that Robbins would have a few such examples. In fact, I took that on faith and gave the thumbs up to the theory on my web site, saying "it is now known that the first person plural was a common Greco-Roman literary device in narrating a voyage." When I put some effort into tracking down the sources, I did not find any such examples.

If Robbins did not wish to suggest that a sea voyage account could be presented in the first person without the implication of the speaker's presence on the scene, Robbins could have reconsidered passages such as this: "The we-passages fit the genre of sea voyage narratives. Such accounts would be expected to contain first person narration, whether or not the author was an actual participant in the voyage. Without first person narration the account would limp. By the first century A.D., a sea voyage recounted in third person narration would be considered out of vogue, especially if a shipwreck or other amazing events were recounted." (p. 228)

And here Robbins is wrong. Susan Marie Praeder indicates numerous third person sea voyages:

And an examination of the first person sea voyages shows the actual relationship (or non-relationship) between first person narration and maritime adventure. Praeder writes: "The reasons fo first person narration in sea voyages in ancient literature are found in the literary frameworks of the sea voyages, other literary forms, and references to participating authors and characters. The sea voyages in Clit. Leuc. 2.31-3.5, Orationes (Aelius Aristides and Dio Chrysostom), Satyricon, Verae Historiae, and Vita are set in first person narration because they are parts of first person works. The person of narration in the sea voyages conforms to the person of narration in their larger literary frameworks. Throughout these works first person narration refers to factual participation by authors or to fictional participation by characters. The sea voyages in Aen. 3, Aethiopica, Clit. Leuc. 5.7, 9-10, 15-17; 8.16, Eph. 3.2.11-15, Met. 3.511-733, and Od. 3.276-302; 7.240-97; 9-12 are fictional reports in direct discourse. First person narration is required by the direct discourse form and because the reporters participated in the sea voyages. In Epistulae, Epistulae ad Familiares, Noctes Atticae, and Periplus Ponti Euxini the sea voyages are personal reports. The first person narrators represent the principal participants Chion, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Arrian. In Agamemnon (Aeschylus) and Helen the sea voyages are in messenger speeches. The first person narrators, the messengers, are peripheral participants in the sea voyages." (p. 211)

Thus, instead of finding any shifts to first person simply because the subject is a sea voyage, the use of the first person is the natural perspective for these stories, and there are other maritime stories which are couched in third person narration, which belies the claim made by Robbins that first person narration would be expected in a sea voyage genre.

No, the very premise of the use of pronouns is to indicate the relationship of the speaker to the subject: you, me, or somebody else.

Yes, for example, A True Story by Lucian is outright fiction, as our narrator tells us in the introduction. And even fiction respects the roles of first, second, and third person perspective; when A True Story has "I passages" and "we passages," they refer to the presence of the narrator at the fictional events.

You promised "vigorous debate," but here you venture into "ideological" accusations, which are false and fallacious. That's not vigorous, it's rude.

As you note, there is definitely a juncture between the first two sentences and the remainder of the document starting at the third sentence. That's my point. The document as a whole is written with the first person, from the third sentence to the conclusion. Only the first two sentences are in the third person. So why do you propose to class the second sentence with the third sentence? That would make the second sentence an anomaly as the short and unique third person narration in a story that is otherwise in the first person in its entirety. When you already grant that there is a preface to this work, it should be obvious that the preface is in the third person, while the main part of the story is told in the first person.

Of course I have not ignored this document nor the twenty plus other texts to which Robbins refers. Robbins says, "A precise parallel exists in the Voyage of Hanno the Carthaginian." (p. 225) We can safely say that Robbins is mistaken here.

Do you know of references to any more recent scholars who have discussed the Antiochene Acts of the Martyrdom of Ignatius?

Although I've seen no problems with it, Lightfoot's source criticism need not be correct for this to fail as an example. Since the author of the "we passages" in the Antiochene Acts claims to have been present at the events, and narrates in the first person in passages with no connection to seafaring adventure, this clearly cannot be used as evidence for the use of a first person literary device due to the subject of a sea voyage.

Xenophon was present at the battles recorded. A scribe later adds a concluding summary in the text of Xenophon, apparently writing in the way that he expected that Xenophon would write (since the scribe wasn't there and Xenophon was). But Xenophon never wrote his narrative in the first person. Thus, a misunderstanding. In any case, and much more importantly, this is not an example of a shift from third person to first person, as the author of the gloss was not the author of the rest of the text (as I've already pointed out).

I'm not appealing to authority; I'm quoting arguments. Please point out where these secondary sources err.

best,
Peter Kirby

[One correction of "third" to "first."]

Layman

Toto,

We have been over The Voyage of Hanno before and I stressed to you that the biggest failure of it as an example for Robbins' theoretical convention was not that the third person was used in what modern scholars conclude is a preface (though this is problematic as well), but that the Voyage of Hanno is a first hand account. It cannot be used, therefore, to prove that there existed a literary convention to use the first person plural for sea voyage accounts when the author did not intend to imply narrator participation.

There are two theories about the authorship of The Voyage of Hanno, both of which are based on narrator participation.

First, that it was written by Hanno himself. (http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/ROADS/cgi...1002585507-1263 ),

Second, that it was based on an interview with two of Hanno's sailors (http://www.livius.org/ha-hd/hanno/hanno02.html#Two sources).

Either way, its written from the "we" perspective because it is written from the perpsective of a participant or participants of the voyage. Indeed, this example only strengthens the idea that the "we-passages" are claims to actual participation, not a literary device used because they describe sea voyages.

Toto

Originally posted by Toto (re Hanno)
Originally posted by Peter Kirby:I did not mean to imply that you were ideologically motivated and I am sorry if you got that impression. I think that Hemer is ideologically motivated, and Layman's attack on Robbins was ideologically motivated. You just seem to be scrupulously following the details. But I do not understand why you don't see what is clear to me.

Why do I propose to class the second sentence of Hanno in with the third? Because they go together logically, except for the thrid person-first person shift. The second sentence starts "He set sail. . ."

I don't grant that there is a preface - that is the explanation that the anti-Robbins scholars have come up with to distinguish this case - but if there is a preface, the first sentence looks like it could be a preface, and the second looks like it starts the action narrative at that point, in the third person. (Of course, the original writing does not have a break for the preface or any other indication.)

I don't know what more to say about this. It seems obvious on the face of it: a direct transition from third person to first person. This is why I assume anyone classifying the second sentence as part of a prologue must have some ideological aim. Perhaps I am wrong. But I think that those who group the first and second sentences together as a prologue are doing so on the basis of the common third person narrative, which is what we are trying to explain.

I do not have access to Susan Praeder's article, perhaps she sheds more light on this.

But I seem to have gotten into a position that I don't want to be in, of defending Robbins. I went back to his original post on
Crosstalk. He said there:

I gather from this that Robbins sees the important issue as first person plural narration by itself, whether or not there was a shift from 1st person singlular or 3rd person to start with. It appears to be irrelevant to him whether use of "we" can be explained as simply the logical grammatical use for that particular narration - it still establishes a certain mood, a sense of group adventure.

You object to Robbins' statement:

Notice here that Robbins is not talking about shifting from first or third person to first person plural, just about the use of the first person plural.

I wonder if the problem isn't that some commentators have read more into Robbins than what he said, and have constructed an argument against reading Acts as history out of this part of Robbins' argument.

I think that on the CrossTalk exchange, Ken Olsen made some astute comments here on the nature of what the convention of first person plural narration meant, that were never actually answered:

{Olsen notes first that Josephus uses "we" to refer to his shipmates, but not to his fellow soldiers and subordinates.)

But there was no response to this, and the discussion ended without anything being resolved, as far as I can tell.

Toto

Your first link is invalid. It should be

Hanno

But it provides no support for the idea that Hanno himself wrote the narrative, and points to your second link, which makes an ad hoc guess that two sailors were interviewed, in order to explain a duplication in a line.

But that scribe certainly was not on the voyage, was he?

And now that you're back, Layman, a number of people are waiting for your comments on the ossuary.

Layman

It certainly is written from the point of view of participants. Whether because a scribe took down the stories of two illitearte sailors or because Hanno himself recounted the story, the reason the first person plural is used is because of that perspective, not because its a sea journey. Therefore, it provides no support for Robbin's theory.

Layman

Toto,

Isn't Olson saying that the author of Acts and its readers would have understood the "we" in Acts to be a claim that the author participated in those events?

Olson asks whether the author of Acts meant to imply he was a companion of Paul. His answer is "Yes."

Olson asks whether the readers of Acts meant to imply that he was a companion of Paul. His answer is "Yes."

The reason that Olson's post didn't go anywere was because Robbins refused to respond to him. Remember, Olson specifically stated he wanted to "press" Robbins on these issues. Robbins refused to answer.

And if you are claiming that we all misunderstood Robbins and that he never meant to imply that the use of "we" was not intended to imply narrator participation, then its the skeptics that have the apologizing to do, since you guys have used this theory to attack those who believe that Acts may have been written by a companion of Paul, or may have relied on the journal of a companion of Paul.

In any event, it appears that is exactly what Robbins meant to imply:

"The we-passages fit the genre of sea voyage narratives. Such accounts would be expected to contain first person narration, whether or not the author was an actual participant in the voyage. Without first person narration the account would limp. By the first century A.D., a sea voyage recounted in third person narration would be considered out of vogue, especially if a shipwreck or other amazing events were recounted." (p. 228)"

Peter Kirby

Praeder writes: "Hannonis Periplus is a first person report with a third person introduction. The shift from third person narration to first person narration takes place too soon and too smoothly to be called a parallel to the shift in Acts. The third person introduction in sec. 1 indicates the participants in Hanno's sailing expedition, 'The Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail outside the Pillars of Hercules and found Libyphoenician cities. So he set sail with sixty fifty-oared ships, a multitude of men and women numbering about thirty thousand, stores of food, and other supplies.' First person plural participants, presumably Hanno and his company, are the principal participants from sec. 2 to the conclusion in sec. 18. Third person narration shifts to first person narration in sec. 2 not because there is a sea voyage but because the introduction is over. This is the only such transition in Hannonis Periplus. In contrast, in Acts there are several shifts from third person narration to first person narration, all of which are followed by shifts back to third person narration and are found in the later chapters of Acts." (pp. 212-213)

Since we are down just to quibbling about Hanno's introduction, it is fair to say that there simply is no precedent for the type of literary device that Robbins claims to see in Acts.

best,
Peter Kirby