The topos of Divine Testimony in Luke-Acts. James R. McConnell
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from crime by the fear of divine punishment, and how sacred an association of citizens becomes when the immortal gods are made members of it, either as judges or as witnesses [quamque sancta sit societas civium inter ipsos diis immortalibus interpositis tum iudicibus, tum testibus]. (Leg. 2.7.15)
Thus Cicero associates the goodness of Rome’s laws with the gods who are active participants in the legal system through their testimony and judgment.
The examples above demonstrate that the topos of divine testimony was used abundantly as proof or evidence in ancient speeches and philosophical treatises. The examples also show the breadth of situations in which ancient rhetors were able to apply the topos in forensic and deliberative cases involving law, politics, and even in philosophical works. The method of the present study, as explained in chapter one, is to consider how the topos of divine testimony would have been heard and understood by an ancient audience, especially in the case of Luke-Acts. Therefore, it is appropriate at this time to consider, albeit briefly, the question of the persuasiveness of this particular topos in the ancient world. It is to this question I now turn.
The Persuasiveness of the topos of Divine Testimony
First, it is important to remember that the primary goal of ancient rhetoric was to persuade one’s audience of the validity of one’s case.193 For example, Cicero in De inventione says, “The function of eloquence seems to be to speak in a manner suited to persuade an audience, the end is to persuade by speech [finis persuadere dictione]” (Inv. 1.5.6).194 Similarly, in De oratore, he maintains that “the duty of an orator is to speak in a style fitted to convince” (De or. 1.31.138). Quintilian also expresses this idea; in considering the different definitions of rhetoric, among the diversity of opinions he finds this one area of agreement: “They almost all believe that the function of oratory lies in persuading or in speaking in a way adapted to persuade.” He then concludes, “So the commonest definition is that ‘rhetoric is the power of persuading’” (Inst. 2.15.3, 5). Given this emphasis on the results of rhetoric,195 namely to persuade an audience and to adapt one’s presentation to the audience in order to do so,196 one can argue that simply the fact that the topos of divine testimony appears in these speeches and treatises noted above is evidence of their persuasiveness in the context in which they were written and/or spoken.197 If the rhetorician indeed desired to persuade the audience, then these arguments must have been considered to be convincing.
The emphasis on the orator’s consideration of the audience is even more significant when one considers other ancient writings in which authors describe their individual attitudes towards the gods and divination. One example is from Cicero himself. In the first half of De divinatione, Cicero, through the character Quintus, Cicero’s younger brother, espouses the contemporary Stoic worldview concerning divination and augury,198 one in which these aspects of religion were acceptable and beneficial to the people.199 The second half of the treatise is spoken through the character of Marcus Cicero himself, and consists of a complete refutation of what Quintus has put forward as a defense of divination and augury.200 The negative attitude toward divination and augury described by Marcus Cicero in this treatise has caused scholars to question where Cicero himself actually stood on this issue.201 For my purposes in this study, however, I would argue that the question of the “historical” Cicero’s opinion of divination is insignificant, and it is insignificant for two reasons.
First, I have already discussed the significance for the rhetorician of persuasion and adapting one’s case to the audience. Thus, the important question for the rhetor is not, “What do I believe?” Rather, the more significant question is, “What proofs and evidence will convince my audience?”202 Thus, Cicero can write,
Now nothing in oratory, Catulus, is more important than to win for the orator the favour of his hearer, and to have the latter so affected as to be swayed by something resembling a mental impulse or emotion, rather than by judgement or deliberation. For men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, or authority, or any legal standard, or judicial precedent, or statute [quam veritate aut praescripto aut iuris norma aliqua aut iudicii formula aut legibus]. (De or. 2.42.178)
For the present discussion, it is important to note that Cicero places a higher value on convincing his audience by emotional appeal than “reality” (veritas).203 Quintilian makes a similar statement; in the context of the appeal to emotions within a speech, he says, “But where force has to be brought to bear on the judges’ feelings and their minds distracted from the truth, there the orator’s true work begins” (Inst. 6.2.5). Therefore, given this emphasis on conviction at all costs, Cicero’s personal views concerning augury and divination are not significant.204 What is significant is the judge’s (or audience’s) opinion of the evidence, and it is this second point noted above that I now address.
In the first chapter of this study I explained in the section describing the proposed methodology that I would focus on the implied audience of Luke-Acts and other extra-biblical works of the same period. Thus the methodology of this study and Cicero’s (and Quintilian’s, as well as others’) focus on the audience reception of the proofs and evidence presented in speeches line up in conjunction. And the evidence from antiquity, from Cicero himself and from numerous others,205 clearly points to the fact that in the ancient world, it was accepted that the gods were intimately involved in the affairs of humanity, which included their pronouncing judgment on human beings as well as guiding their affairs. From the first half of De divinatione, it is readily apparent that there was a worldview in Cicero’s time that included human-divine communications, a worldview which Cicero seems to desire to counter in the second half of the treatise.206 Because this attitude toward and acceptance of the divine existed, it is no surprise that an orator would exploit it in order to win conviction.
A second example is found in the Plutarch’s De superstitione, in which he satirizes dreams207 and ridicules the idea of a soul being tormented after death. As will be demonstrated in the chapter five, however, dreams are extremely important in Plutarch’s Lives, especially when the subject of the bios is near death. Also, in De superstitione, Plutarch attacks eclipses as portents,208 but in the Lives, eclipses are seen as both scientific/natural phenomena as well as omens for the subject of the Life.209 I have shown that in the writings of Cicero, even though he was possibly not personally convinced of the validity of augury and divination, he was not reserved in his use of divine testimony as proofs. In chapter five, I will demonstrate the same point for Plutarch: although in Superst. Plutarch expresses reluctance in completely believing that natural phenomena represented portents, he, too, is quite willing to cite them as proofs in his writings.
Before moving into the analysis of the use of the topos of divine testimony in ancient narratives, including Luke-Acts, it is important to return to the work of W. Wuellner.210 Wuellner argues that the choice of topoi by ancient authors from which they built their arguments was a culturally-conditioned process and was determined by the rhetorical situations they faced.211 Therefore, given first-century culture, a culture which is dominated by the concept of gods who are intimately involved in the lives of human beings and who communicate their pleasure and displeasure through various methods, it is easy to understand why a speaker or author in the first century would select the topos of divine testimony as evidence of what that person is trying to prove.
In sum, in this chapter I first addressed how the term topos is currently being applied to NT studies. The conclusions from this study were that the term topos, when applied to NT studies, is somewhat polyvalent. It can refer to a line of argumentation, literary themes, or moral topoi that receive extensive treatment in philosophical treatises, categories that overlap to some degree. I then surveyed