Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles

333 Pages·2003·11.25 MB·English

by  Dennis R. MacDonald

Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?
DENNIS R. MACDONALD
Does the
New Testament
Imitate Homer?
FOUR CASES FROM THE
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
For Gordon, Wynne, Don, and Treehouse
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction i Part One: The Visions of Cornelius and Peter and Iliad 2
i. Cornelius and Peter 19
z. Lying Dream and True Portent 23
3. More Dreams and Portents z9
4. The Visions of Cornelius and Peter 44
5. Local Legend or Homeric Imitation? 56
Part Two: Paul's Farewell at Miletus and Iliad 6
6. Hector's Farewell to Andromache 69
7. Paul's Farewell to the Ephesian Elders 74
8. Jewish Testament or Homeric Imitation? 93
Part Three: The Selection of Matthias and Iliad 7
9. The Selection of Ajax to Face Hector 1105
io. The Selection of Matthias to Replace Judas 107
iii. Jerusalem Legend or Homeric Imitation? 113
Part Four: Peter's Escape from Prison and Iliad 24
iz. Priam's Escape from Achilles and Its Imitators 123
113. Alexander's Escape from Darius 131
14. Peter's Escape from Herod 1137
15. Hellenistic Legend or Homeric Imitation? 141
Conclusion 146
Appendix: Greek and Latin Parallels 1153
List of Abbreviations 1167
Notes 11711
Bibliography zo9
Index 2211
Acknowledgments
At the risk of being trite, I must acknowledge that this book would have been
impossible without the encouragement, efforts, abilities, and support of my
students, comrades, family, and friends. Several passages are stronger for the
insights of students at the Claremont School of Theology and the Claremont
Graduate University, especially Ruben Dupertuis, Brett Provance, Michael
Schufer, Syng Won Suh, Mariano Tomaszewski, and Young Cho, each of whom
has made significant contributions to my understanding of mimesis or its
application to particular texts. Michael also checked the Appendix of Greek and
Latin texts for accuracy. Brett and more recently Leslie Hayes have ably
administered the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity and thus freed me to
pursue my research and writing with increased intensity. Olga Morales and Judy
Little have provided secretarial assistance with class and care. As was the case
with my previous book on Homer and the New Testament, the staff at Yale
University Press has been professional, competent, and solicitous. Their reader,
whoever he or she may be, made brilliant suggestions concerning improvements.
A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me to
complete the manuscript earlier than otherwise would have been possible.
Amy Furth, my wife, with immeasurable grace encouraged my other passion:
ancient religious literature. It is to her father, Gordon Furth, her sister Wynne
Furth, and her brother-in-law Donald Brenneis that I have dedicated this book in
gratitude for their friendship and support. I also have dedicated it to Treehouse,
their home in Marin County, where I have spent many productive and
memorable days hiking, reading, writing, and ruminating about Homer and the
New Testament.
Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?
Introduction
"Who would claim that the writing of prose is not reliant on the Homeric
poems?"' This rhetorical question by a teacher of rhetoric requires a negative
answer: no ancient intellectual would have doubted that the Iliad and the
Odyssey informed the composition of prose, including potentially the stories of
the New Testament. In The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark I argued that
the author of the earliest Gospel used the Odyssey as his primary literary model
for chapters 11-114; he used the Iliad, especially the death of Hector and the
ransom of his corpse, as his model for chapters 15-16.2 I am gratified by many
responses to the book, but it also has generated skepticism, criticism, and
occasional hostility. It is to answer my critics that I have undertaken this book,
which compares four extensive passages in the Acts of the Apostles with the
Iliad.
From the outset I knew that my reading of Mark would meet resistance not
only from those who read the Gospels as historically reliable but also from
critically trained scholars. Most modern treatments of the Gospels and Acts view
their authors as redactors, or editors, of preexisting traditions and written
sources. These practitioners of form criticism divide texts into constituent units
and categorize them by genre, such as parables, proverbs, prayers, prophecies, or
legends of various types, like miracle stories and epiphanies. They then seek to
reconstruct the geographical, linguistic, or theological environments that created
and transmitted them before their articulation in the text. Many scholars would
go so far as to ascribe nearly all narratives in the Gospels and Acts to historical
memory or at least to tradition. Others would grant more originality to these
works, but few consider literary imitation as a dominating compositional
activity.
But early Christian authors not only fiddled with traditions and sources; they
created stories after pagan literary models, sometimes without Jewish or
Christian traditions to inform them. That is, they wrote as they had been taught