Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T11:52:50.783Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Taking up and Raising, Fixing and Loosing: A Chiastic Wordplay in Acts 2.23b-24.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2013

Benjamin R. Wilson*
Affiliation:
Peterhouse College, Trumpington St, Cambridge CB2 1RD, England. email: [email protected].

Abstract

This article identifies a structural and conceptual chiasm within the description of Jesus' death and resurrection in Acts 2.23b-24, which helps to account for the distinctive elements of the passage.

Type
Short Study
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Luke certainly employs ἀνίστημι with reference to the resurrection at certain points in Acts (Acts 2.32; 13.33-34; 17.3, 31). Nonetheless, in the contrast formulae, ἐγείρω is typically the verb employed for the raising of Jesus from the dead (cf. Acts 4.10; 10.40; 13.30).

2 See, for example, Roloff, J., Die Apostelgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985)Google Scholar 50; Bruce, F. F., The Book of the Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. ed. 1988)Google Scholar 123; Marguerat, D., Les Actes des Apôtres 1–12 (CNT; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2007)Google Scholar 90; Peterson, D., The Acts of the Apostles (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009)Google Scholar 147.

3 See, for example, Schenke, L., ‘Die Kontrastformel Apg 4,10b’, Biblische Zeitschrift 26 (1982) 15-16Google Scholar; Barrett, C. K., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994) 143-4Google Scholar; Johnson, L. T., The Acts of the Apostles (SP 5; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1992)Google Scholar 51.

4 R. Pervo calls attention to the pervasive alliteration throughout this passage, yet he does not mention the structural or conceptual chiasm in vv. 23b and 24 (Acts: A Commentary [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 2008]Google Scholar 80).

5 See Luke 22.2; 23.32; Acts 5.33, 36; 7.28; 9.23-24, 29; 12.2; 13.28; 16.27; 23.15, 21, 27; 25.3; 26.10.

6 The daughter of Pharaoh ‘took up’ the infant Moses and nurtured him as her own son (7.21), but when Moses as an adult intervenes in a dispute among two Israelites, one of the men asks Moses if he wishes to ‘kill’ him as Moses ‘killed’ the Egyptian (7.28).

7 Barrett, Acts, 143; Fitzmyer, J. A., The Acts of the Apostles (AB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998)Google Scholar 256; Jervell, J., Die Apostelgeschichte (MeyerK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar 146; Marguerat, Les Actes, 91.

8 Rather than ‘pangs of death’, Pervo prefers the Western variant (τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ ᾅδου), giving much weight to the evidence from Polycarp Phil. 1.2 (Pervo, Acts, 81-2). The difference in meaning is immaterial.

9 See Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, 51.