The topos of Divine Testimony in Luke-Acts. James R. McConnell
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the topos of divine testimony, an external proof through which the rhetor cites the utterances and deeds of the gods in order to persuade the audience of the innocence or guilt of a client and/or the opposition. Thus, the study will analyze citations of Jewish scripture, as well as certain elements of the miraculous, from a rhetorical, audience-oriented perspective, seeking an answer to the question of how divine testimony through words (both spoken and written) and deeds functions within the complete narrative of Luke-Acts. Specific emphasis will be placed on how these particular elements in the narrative would have been understood by Luke’s ancient audience, an audience which lived in a culture in which persuasion through rhetoric was a commonplace.
Methodology
The overall methodology that will be employed by this study can best be described using S. Chatman’s communication model69 of author → text → reader. All three of the elements in Chatman’s model are significant for the methodology used in the study. Each will be described in turn, beginning with the text.
When analyzing specific passages from Luke-Acts, this study will perform a “close reading” of the text. Agreeing with Kelber,70 this study will take seriously the fact that Luke and Acts are the result of the composition of an author; Luke-Acts has a specific plot and characters, which are developed throughout the narrative. Events that are narrated assume the significance of what has gone before as well as what will follow. Therefore, the analysis of each incident must be accomplished with regard to the whole, considering the entire context of Luke-Acts in each case. In some cases, it may be necessary to compare the Lukan passage with its parallels in Mark and/or Matthew in order to discern the specific focus in Luke.
The present study will be primarily one of rhetorical criticism, which reflects suppositions concerning the author of the text as well as the audience of the text. Concerning the documents in the NT, G. Kennedy asks, “How legitimate is it to approach the New Testament in terms of Greek ideas of rhetoric?”71 Kennedy argues from a historical perspective that one is indeed justified when analyzing the NT through a rhetorical lens due to the significance of rhetoric in Greco-Roman education in the first century.72 Rhetoric formed the core of the secondary education system in the Roman Empire. In addition, rhetorical principles were employed in almost every aspect of public life in the culture in which the evangelists and Paul grew up and lived; therefore, it is safe to assume that they were at least familiar with the rudiments of rhetoric, even if they did not formally study it. To attempt to be persuasive means that they would have had to communicate in a manner that the people around them understood.73 Therefore, an author, who had received at least a basic education and who desired to persuade a first-century audience, would be influenced to some degree by the principles of rhetoric taught and practiced within the culture.
Other scholars, by examining the text of Luke and especially Acts, argue that the author of Luke-Acts had received some level of rhetorical training. For example, Kurz notes that Luke’s use of enthymemes as described by Aristotle, the prologues which conform to Greek literary conventions, the emphasis on the trial scenes and their associated forensic rhetoric, as well as the use of inartificial proofs, including witnesses, contracts, and oracles, all serve as evidence that Luke had received an education in rhetoric.74 P. Satterthwaite finds rhetorical influences in Luke’s selection of material, the arrangement of the material (on both a macro and micro level), and the greater amount of narrative emphasis placed on important theological themes. These areas, along with the general style of the narrative and the use of speeches, cause Satterthwaite to conclude that Luke was attempting to persuade his auditors using the rhetorical conventions of his time.75 R. Burridge suggests that it is not out of the realm of possibility that Luke had some type of rhetorical training. He bases this assumption on Luke’s stylistic treatment of Markan material, the speeches in Acts, and “his command of different Greek styles.”76
Finally, M. Parsons, in his recent commentary on Acts, in which he analyzes the text from a rhetorical perspective,77 reminds his readers that Acts was originally written to be heard. The text would therefore have been read by a lector, one who was most likely skilled to some degree in rhetorical practice. The significant point that Parsons makes is that while Acts (and Luke’s Gospel) is a written document, because it was composed to be rehearsed in front of a group of auditors, it most likely shares characteristics with speeches, written in accordance with the guidelines as described in the rhetorical handbooks. Thus, one of Parsons’s emphases in his analysis is on the Progymnasmata, or preliminary exercises.78 The Progymnasmata comprised a
curriculum . . . featuring a series of set exercises of increasing difficulty, [which] was the source of facility in written and oral expression for many persons and training for speech in public life . . . Not only the secular literature of the Greeks and Romans, but the writings of early Christians beginning with the gospels and continuing through the patristic age, and of some Jewish writers as well, were molded by the habits of thinking and writing learned in schools.79
According to Kennedy, the Progymnasmata were a part of the first-century education process for both written and oral communication. Given that Luke is writing in Greek, he clearly had some level of education which would have included the preliminary exercises. One is therefore justified in analyzing Luke-Acts with an eye toward elements of rhetoric, as described in the preliminary exercises and the rhetorical handbooks.
Performing a rhetorical analysis also has implications for the reader/auditor in Chatman’s model. The auditors on which this study will concentrate are those who make up the authorial audience as described by P. Rabinowitz.80 The authorial audience is that group of auditors for which the text is composed; i.e., the author, in writing the text, makes assumptions as to the ability of the audience to understand. The authorial audience is that ideal audience which understands everything the author presents. To reconstruct the authorial audience, this study will draw from the thought of W. Iser81 and H. R. Jauss.82 Iser argues that readers ultimately construct the meaning of a text, using the text as a set of instructions. To construct meaning from the text, a reader relies on her “repertoire,” which consists of other texts with which the reader is familiar, as well as the social and cultural ethos in which the reader lives. Jauss argues similarly, stating that the reading of a text triggers memories contained in a “horizon of expectations” which has been built up through the reading of other texts. Thus, this study will attempt to understand the text as Luke’s first-century readers understood it by reconstructing their repertoire/horizon of expectations through the analysis of writings which were roughly contemporaneous to Luke’s audience. As rhetoric was the primary form of persuasion used in the legal and political spheres of first-century Greco-Roman culture, an analysis of rhetorical principles as found in the Greco-Roman rhetorical handbooks and the Progymnasmata will be a necessary component of this reconstruction, especially in their discussions of the concept of topos/locus.
In sum, the methodology of this study will be that of rhetorical criticism, combined with a close reading of the text in order to discern the persuasive structures within the narrative as well as a vehicle to understand how the text would have been received by first-century auditors. In addition, contemporaneous Jewish and Greco-Roman writings will be analyzed in order to reconstruct the auditors’ horizon of expectations.
Framework