The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past

201 Pages·2003·12.75 MB·English

by  Christine M. Thomas

The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel
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The Act s o f Peter, Gospel Literature ,
and the Ancient Novel
Rewriting the Past
CHRISTINE M. THOMAS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2003
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford Ne w York
Auckland Bangko k Bueno s Aires Cap e Town Chenna i
Dar es Salaam Delh i Hon g Kong Istanbu l Karach i Kolkat a
Kuala Lumpur Madri d Melbourn e Mexic o City Mumba i Nairob i
Sao Paulo Shangha i Taipe i Toky o Toront o
Copyright © 2003 by Christine M. Thomas
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomas, Christine M.
The Acts of Peter, Gospel literature, and the ancient novel :
rewriting the past / Christine M. Thomas.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-512507-X
I. Acts of Peter—Language, style. 2 . Classical fiction—History and criticism. I . Title.
BS2880.P472T48 2003
229'.925-dc21 2002025821
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my parents, in gratitude
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Preface
When I first began working with the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the second-century
narratives of the exploits of the first followers of Jesus, I was stymied to see them fre-
quently compared to the ancient novel in the secondary literature on this topic. For I had
read Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and parts of Heliodoros, and these elegant products seemed
worlds apart from the unsophisticated and clumsy Greek prose of the Apocryphal Acts. It
was John Strugnell, one of my professors at Harvard, who said to me, "Perhaps you are
comparing them to the wrong sort of novel." He suggested to me the Alexander romance
as a better model, which became the point of departure for the present study.
Already the investigations of Virginia Burrus and Dennis MacDonald had demon-
strated the utility of employing models from oral tradition to explain the odd composi-
tional history of the Apocryphal Acts. My texts of the Acts of Peter did not fit neatly into
this model, however: they were not the simple textual fixation of oral tradition. When one
took into account the later editions of the Acts of Peter as a group, it became abundantly
clear that the texts themselves were behaving in a fashion strikingly similar to oral tradi-
tion. The structure of the narrative from one edition to the next was fluid. The characters
and motivations had been updated in each text to correspond to the present reality at the
time of telling, a feature that is called "homeostatic organization" in the study of oral tra-
dition. This surprised me greatly, since the later Roman Empire was not a "primary oral
culture," but one infused with literature and literacy, as had been the Mediterranean world
for centuries. In the course of further study, I became convinced that the key to under-
standing this phenomenon was the significance of the Apocryphal Acts as historical records.
The successive "homeostatic" updating of the narrative tradition is a chosen strategy to
maintain the relevance of a narrative tradition that is fundamentally historical. Correspond-
ingly, as I continued my studies, the Apocryphal Acts began to look less and less fictional,
although I would contend that they are still novelistic.
These features of fluidity and homeostasis are characteristic of many types of early
Christian narrative, the other Apocryphal Acts and the gospels being the closest ana-
logs to the Acts of Peter. Although th e constraints of space have prevented me from
drawing out the full implications of my findings for these related texts, this examination
of the Acts of Peter should provide an illuminating case study for them. Moreover, stu-
dents of the novel will find extended discussions on the relationship of the novel to
history, and on the genre of the novel as such, which are important considerations for
generic classification of early Christian literary works.
viii Preface
My list of debts is long. Most of the chapters were presented in one form or another
in a series of conference papers from 1992 to 1994 held at the Society of Biblical Litera-
ture, for the Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative Group, and for the
Intertextuality in Christian Apocrypha Seminar. It was my happiness to find that profes-
sional meetings do sometimes achieve their goal, for the discussion and individual com-
ments after these presentations materially improved my work. In particular, I would like
to thank Judith Perkins and Richard Pervo, both of whom have been generous and un-
stinting in their support and have given me the impetus of their own erudite interest in
related questions; Dennis MacDonald, whose immense and learned creativity and spirit
of respectful and productive controversy has been a gift to me and many others; and Robert
Stoops, who has kindly allowed me to see his work in progress, who has never failed to
offer me useful criticism, and from whose work on the Acts of Peter I have learned much.
This book is a substantial revision of my dissertation at Harvard University for the
Committee on the Study of Religion. The writing of the initial draft was carried out in
a sunlit office overlooking Mt. Auburn Street, a stone's throw from the hidden trea-
sures of Widener Library, in the congenial atmosphere of the Society of Fellows. The
support of this fellowship improved the quality of this work by offering the time for
concentrated creative pursuits. My conversation partners at Harvard were many. It is
my hope that the publication of this manuscript will not constitute the final chapter of
these discussions with learned friends, whose faces I see before me as I write, but will
instead constitute the renewed beginning of an ongoing conversation.
At the risk of leaving others unnamed, I would like to thank in particular Christo-
pher Matthews, Bernadette Brooten, Allen Callahan, Georgia Frank, and Ellen Aitken
for offering particularly illuminating comments on one or another chapter of this manu-
script. Rebecca Lesses allowed me to see her work in progress and granted me hours of
enlightening discussion on the topics of oraliry and performance. Helmut Koester and
Francois Bovon together offered an expertise in early Christian literature that can hardly
be rivaled and saved me from many an error, always with grace and kindness. Few
experiences can match the probing intensity of the conversations I enjoyed with Albert
Henrichs, many of which I still remember extensively. His native intellectual curiosity
has afforded me constant encouragement in my work and has suggested productive lines
of investigation. I was fortunate to have run alongside Larry Wills while he was en-
gaged in a project on another type of novelistic literature, the Jewish novellas. He was
not only generous, but completely unselfish in sharing with me his work in progress
and in granting me long discussions of theoretical issues we were both pursuing at the
time. A series of conversations in May and June 1992 were particularly crucial in deter-
mining the shape of this work. In the years after Harvard, I would also thank Thomas
Drew-Bear, who faithfully read and commented on the articles that appeared as prelimi-
nary studies for this book and also gave the manuscript itself a careful reading late in its
gestation. My husband Jorge Castillo helped me navigate the turbid waters of modern
literary criticism, and my inability to master it completely results from my own obsti-
nacy rather than any fault of instruction on his part.
'November 2001 C.M.T .
Santa Barbara, California
Contents
Abbreviations x i
Note on the Text and Symbols xii i
1. Th e Apocryphal Acts in a Literary World 3
2. Tim e and Revision: Literary Processes at Work in the Acts of Peter 1 4
3. Fixit y and Fluidity in the Narrative Trajectory of the Acts of Peter 4 0
4- Narrativ e Fluidity as a Generic Characteristic 7 2
5. Th e Acts of Peter among the Novels and Histories 8 7
Appendix One: Overview of the Ancient Editions of the Acts of Peter 10 6
Appendix Two: Intertextual Relationships between the Actus Vercellenses
and Other Early Christian Literature 10 8
Appendix Three: Comparison of the Actus Vercellenses, the Greek Martyrdom
Account, and the Linus Text 11 5
Notes 11 7
Bibliography 15 5
Index of Ancient Texts 17 1
Subject Index 17 7